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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28265049">Orains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersnapper/pseuds/gingersnapper'>gingersnapper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Orains Universe [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Friendship, Refugee, learning a language</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:47:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>23,362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28265049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersnapper/pseuds/gingersnapper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>(Pronounced ‘orange-uh’)</p><p>Katniss, a young refugee girl from Hebridia comes to Panem with nothing, not even a common language to speak with her peers. She finds a friend in Peeta Mellark, who decides to help her learn English and becomes someone whom Katniss considers very close to her.</p><p>AU in which there are no Hunger Games and Katniss is a refugee from Hebridia, formerly Scotland.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Katniss Everdeen &amp; Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Orains Universe [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Autumn 2151 - Age Eight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I know I’m supposed to be working on another story, but I got this idea and couldn’t resist writing it! Hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>There were times when things seemed pretty bleak in District Twelve. We were better off than most, my family, but there were times when we ate stale bread and whatever squirrels Mr. Everdeen traded us for some bread, and there were a lot of times that we went to bed hungry. “At least you’re not as skinny as those seam rats,” my mother used to say. “Or those </span>
  <em>
    <span>wretched</span>
  </em>
  <span> refugees. I’d rather a seam rat enter this store than one of them.” A lot of people, merchants mostly, seemed to hold that view, and the Seam lauded the fact that they were a step up from the refugees in their faces. But the refugees kept coming, until the president of Panem said that they couldn’t come anymore. The last boat came in the summer of 2151, when I was eight years old. I couldn’t help but wonder why they wanted to come to Panem so badly. What could be so wrong about where they came from? Were they starving like we were, dropping dead in the streets like a lot of Seamfolk did?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The history of this land says it is land of opportunity,” said a young Hebridean man when I’d asked. He came into the bakery on the arm of Sidney Silversmith, the grocer’s youngest daughter and a district midwife-in-training.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What does that mean?” I’d asked him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It mean the street is made of gold,” he said with a hopeful look in broken English. The refugees came from an island nation known as Hebridia, as we were taught in school. It had used to be a nation called Scotland, but was now nothing but a bunch of islands called the Hebrides. They spoke a language that they called Gàidhlig, which was pronounced ‘gah-lick’, and they all had a very thick accent that could often be hard to understand. Most of those who came over were adults, but there were some who brought their whole families. What they didn’t realise was that once they came over, they couldn’t leave. Since most of them were adults, I’d never really met a Hebridean refugee that was even remotely around my age. The youngest refugee was was a teenager, nearly eighteen years old and therefore nearly an adult, while the rest were all the children of refugees that had a bit of an accent and knew some of the language, but had clearly lost a lot of the culture that their parents had come from. When the last ship came that summer, there were only six refugees who were brought to District Twelve. It was said that there had been a terrible accident and most of them died, and those six were the only survivors. Five of them were adults or in their late teens, and one of them was an eight-year-old girl.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first time I saw her was when I learned that she was a survivor, but apparently, she was also Mr. Everdeen’s daughter, too. I thought that was weird - didn’t he only have the one? Where did this new daughter come from? Mr. Everdeen was a refugee when he came over ten years ago now, according to my daddy, and Mrs. Everdeen was the daughter of two refugees who had become merchants. Daddy said that they only had one daughter. I didn’t have time to think about it further because I forgot how to breathe the moment I heard that new refugee girl sing. She sang the Valley Song in English, and even the birds - morning larks - had stopped to listen. I knew, right there in that moment at eight years old, that I was a goner - I was in love with that girl. Our teacher asked if her daddy had taught her that song, but the girl appeared confused. “Oh, dear, you don’t know a word of English, do you?” the teacher asked her, and the girl looked very confused. “Miss Everdeen, you’re going to have to learn to speak our language.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What a loser,” I heard Merx Mueller, the blacksmith’s son, mutter beside me. “She can’t even talk!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She just came here from another place. She can’t help it,” I said to him, feeling the need to protect her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wow, Mellark. Are you a loser, too?” Merx snickered, and I rolled my eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Only losers know losers,” I spat back at him, and Merx and his two friends snorted with laughter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Refugees are dirty. That’s what </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> mama says,” said Merx’s friend, Cottage Lennon, the broker’s youngest daughter, said. Her big sister, Aaricia, was best friends with my big brother, Chris, and what a contrast they were. Cottage was mean, while Aaricia was really nice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> dirty. They come here to take our jobs. That’s what Daddy says,” said Baxter Bates, the son of one of the officials who worked in the Justice Building.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t even know her. I’ll bet she’s really nice!” said my best friend, Delly Cartwright, the cobbler’s daughter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Daddy says all refugees are the same,” said Baxter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Would you go into the woods if your daddy told you to?” I asked him, and Baxter scowled at me. The woods were a scary place and nobody was allowed in them. There were big scary animals that eat people, and that’s why we had an electrified fence around the district.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up, you stupid reffer lover,” he said. ‘Reffer’ was a slang word for the refugees, and Daddy says it’s a very mean word. Even Mama won’t say it, and she doesn’t like refugees, either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t say that! That’s mean!” Delly snapped at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can say whatever I want, reffer lover,” Baxter spat at her. I looked back at the refugee girl, who was now sat all by herself in the corner of the room looking sad and even ashamed. I wanted to approach her, but what if she was afraid of me? Her first week at school proved that she had a very good reason to be afraid of everyone, since Merx and his friends made sure that she knew she wasn’t welcome. They wouldn’t let her sit at any tables - in fact, </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span> let her sit at the tables, so she sat under a tree by herself to eat her lunch, which was later stolen off of her by Baxter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s all by herself,” I said to Delly. “I think we should go over there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think that’s a good idea, she probably wants to be left alone,” said Delly with a hint of fear in her voice. “That, and I heard Merx say that he was gonna beat up anyone he saw talking to her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t care,” I said. “He won’t beat me up. My daddy used to wrestle with his daddy, and he said that he beat Mr. Mueller every time. No one deserves to sit by themselves.” With that said, I got up and made my way to the tree with my brown paper back of lunch in my hands, and when she looked up at me fearfully, I gave her a smile. I felt terrible that she was so afraid even of me, all because the other kids were mean to her and she didn’t know why. “Hi,” I told her. “I saw that you were all alone, and...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Tha mi duilich, chan eil mi a’ bruidhinn Berula,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she told me in her native language, and I let out a sigh. I forgot for a moment that she didn’t speak English, so I had to think of something else. I didn’t understand her language and she didn’t understand mine, so maybe body language would help?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh...” I said, unsure of where to take this conversation next. I sat down next to her on the ground and she shrunk back a little, but I smiled again, and she eyed me suspiciously. “I won’t hurt you,” I told her, shaking my head and holding my hands out with my palms facing her. “Friend,” I said with a smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“F...friend...” she muttered, and I nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, friend,” I said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh...” she said, and then she pointed to me. “Friend?” I couldn’t help but chuckle, and she looked offended.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no!” I said, and then I pointed to myself. “Peeta. I am Peeta. Peeta is friend. Yours.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” she replied, glancing down for a moment, and then looking back up at me. “Peeta.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” I said, nodding, and then I pointed to her. “You?” It took her a second to realise what I was trying to ask her, and then she looked back up at me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss,” she said, her hand on her chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss,” I repeated, and she nodded. “Hello, Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>tha sin coltach</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she replied, then cleared her throat. “Ha... heh... Heh-low... Peeta.” I smiled, and then she smiled, too, settling in comfortably next to me as I set the paper bag down and opened it, looking to see if I could offer her anything. I pulled out the first thing that was in there - an orange - and I placed it in my palm and held it out in front of her for her to see.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Orange,” I told her, looking at her face as she processed what I had said, and then she looked up at me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Orains</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she replied. It sounded very similar, pronounced as ‘orange-uh’. “Orange.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Orains</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” I repeated after her. I decided then and there that I would help her learn English, since it seemed that no one else wanted to. She couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand her, but maybe if we worked together, we could eventually have at least an idea of what we were saying to each other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I got picked on by Merx and his friends, but I really didn’t care. They laughed at me, flicked my ears in class and knocked my books out of my hands in the halls, but I didn’t care. If she was ever nearby when it happened, my new friend, Katniss, would always stop and help me pick them up, her hand occasionally brushing mine. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Leabhar</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she said in her language, wanting to learn the English word.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Book,” I told her as she held one in her hand, and then I added a second one. “Books. Two books. One, two.” She held each of the books in her hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Two... books...” she repeated. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Leabhraichean. Aon, dà. Dà leabhar.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dah lee-var,” I repeated, and she smiled and nodded. That was how we formed our friendship, Katniss and me. Occasionally, she would ask me what a certain object was called, or I would simply tell her what something was and she would repeat it, and then tell me the Gàidhlig word for it. “Pencil,” I said one mid-September day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, pencil,” she repeated. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Peansail.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pen-sahl,” I repeated. “Similar.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Similar?” she asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh...” I took her pencil from her hand and set it next to mine. “Similar. Same.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, same,” she said, then raised an eyebrow. “What... what does say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um...” I had to think for a second. How did I explain what the word ‘similar’ meant to someone who didn’t speak English? “Uh... Pencil,” I said. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Peansail.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sound similar, uh...” Suddenly, I remembered two other words that we had learned early on that also sounded similar. “Hello and </span>
  <em>
    <span>halò</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah! Similar! Yes!” Katniss said, finally getting the meaning. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Coltach.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Similar.” So that’s what that meant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Similar. Kohl-tohk,” I repeated, and we shared a smile together. She had such a pretty smile, and I hated when Merx and his stupid friends found ways to wipe it off of her face. She was very beautiful, actually, with very pretty chocolate brown curls and beautiful silver eyes that kind of reminded me of Mama’s eyes a bit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Word had gotten around quite a bit that I was helping the new refugee girl learn English, and Mama wasn’t happy about it at all. I hardly listened to her when she yelled about how refugees were dirty and that Katniss would grow up to only want me for sex and trap me into a marriage that would leave me poor and starving - kind of harsh to tell an eight-year-old. I accepted the nasty slap she gave me with as much grace as I could possibly stand, and tried my hardest to hide the bruise in school the next day, but Katniss saw it and immediately seemed to worry.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dè dh’èirich dhut?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she asked me in a worried tone, her warm hand finding it’s way to my cheek as her thumb ran over the bruise. I didn’t need a translator to tell me that she’d asked what happened to me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened,” I translated, acting as if nothing was wrong. “Good,” I said with a smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What... happen...” she tried to repeat. “Good?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good,” I repeated with a smile, but I could tell she knew I was lying. She shook her head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Math</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Good,” she repeated. “You... good no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good yes,” I said with a smile. “Good no means ‘bad’.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bad,” she repeated. “Good no... bad... </span>
  <em>
    <span>dona.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Doh-nah </span>
  <em>
    <span>agus</span>
  </em>
  <span> mah. Bad and good,” I said. I knew the Gàidhlig word for ‘and’ from previous conversations.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happen?” she asked again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bump into door,” I replied. We were standing near a classroom door, so I pointed at the door. “Door,” I said, and then I stood next to her and bumped her shoulder with mine. “Bump. Bump into door.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Doras</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Similar,” Katniss said, looking at the door, and then she looked at my shoulder, pointing at it. “Bump?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no,” I said, and then I looked at the door and walked into it lightly to show her. “Bump into door.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>trost</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Bump into door... </span>
  <em>
    <span>Trost a-steach doras. Tha thu trost a-steach an doras.</span>
  </em>
  <span> You bump into the door,” she told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” I told her with a smile. “Good! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Math!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” She accepted my explanation, but only because she knew she couldn’t understand any other explanation, but I knew she didn’t believe me. I think she knew that the bruise on my face was related to her, and I sort of figured that out when I noticed she tried to distance herself from me. I tried to sit with her at lunch, but she shook her head and pointed to the tables. “I don’t want to sit there,” I told her. “I want to sit here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no, you... sit there,” she replied. “Good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, bad. I don’t want to sit there,” I told her somewhat firmly, and she rolled her eyes and stood up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Chan eil mi airson gum bi thu air do ghoirteachadh,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she said, although I had no idea what that meant. She sighed in frustration. “You sit there. Good sit there. Sit here, bad. No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” I said. “Sit there bad. Sit here, good. With you. Good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No!” she cried with frustration, then growled a bit as she tried to figure out how to convey her thoughts, and then she punched me in the shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ow! That hurt!” I exclaimed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hurt! You hurt, bad. Me, you hurt, bad,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What? Katniss, no! You didn’t hurt me!” I said, putting my hand on my cheek. “Not you!”</span>
</p>
<p>“Yes me. They,” she said, pointing to the other tables. “They mean. At you. You with me. No.”</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” she said, and she let out a sigh, then collected her things and stalked off inside of the building, leaving me to sit by myself under the tree. She understood a lot more than I gave her credit for, and the fact that she believed that she was the reason I got hurt made me angry. It was my own choice to be her friend and it wasn’t fair that she thought she didn’t deserve a friend all because some people had the belief that refugees weren’t people, too. I intended to tell her that after school, somehow explain to her that it wasn’t her fault and that she wasn’t the reason I got hurt, but I didn’t know how. I skipped a class to try and figure out how I would tell her, but not knowing how stressed me out so much that I cried in the bathroom. I really cared about her and I wanted to be her friend, but the other kids were so mean to her that it made her afraid of anyone being kind to her.</span>
</p>
<p>The next time I saw her, I had just seen Merx push her into a muddy puddle and laugh at her as she tried to get up, pushing her back down and holding her down in the puddle. “Filthy reffer! I hope you die so it’s one less mouth for this district to feed!” he said to her, and the words that left his mouth made me so angry, I saw red. I hardly know what happened, but I do know that I plowed right into him and knocked him over, punching his face.</p>
<p>
  <span>“How dare you say that to her! She’s a better person than your whole family combined! Don't you </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> say talk to her like that again!” I yelled at him, and when I thought he’d had enough, I got off of him, and he got up and took off running, crying and clearly trying to hide a wet spot that had formed on the crotch of his pants. “Yeah, you’d better run!” As I watched him run off, I turned back to Katniss, who was still in the puddle watching me. I reached out a hand to her, which she hesitated to take. “I don’t care if he hurts me,” I told her. “I like you. You’re nice. Good. You don’t hurt me. They are mean.” She met my eyes, then accepted my hand and allowed me to pull her out of the puddle. I slipped my jacket off and wrapped it around her shoulders. “It’s cold,” I told her, and she surprised me by throwing her arms around my neck and hugging me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“<em>Tapadh leat</em>... Thank you, Peeta,” she whispered to me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course,” I told her, hugging her back. “You’re my friend. I’ll always protect you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Friend,” she said, and then she pulled back from our hug. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Caraid.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Friend.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Car-rage,” I repeated with a smile, trying to pronounce it correctly. “Friend.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Spring 2152 - Age Nine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta continues to help Katniss with learning English and muses on their friendship.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trying to rush through but not rush through the younger years, it’ll get much more fun when they’re older ;)</p><p>For now, enjoy the cute, sweet innocence of childhood</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The more Katniss learned English, not only from me but from a special teacher and her parents, she got better and better. Within a few months, her sentences were making more and more sense, although many were still broken. We could communicate better, and soon, Katniss started inviting me to her home. “Are you sure you want me there?” I asked her that spring, and she nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” she said. “My parent want to see my friend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Parents,” I corrected her. “Remember, when there’s two of something, there’s an ‘s’ at the end of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, yes. S,” she repeated. “My parents want to see my friend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d love to meet your family,” I told her with a smile. We’d become known by our school as always being together after that day Merx pushed her into the puddle, and Merx had, for the most part, stopped bothering her - at least when I was around. Mama had been very mad at me when she found out I beat him up over a refugee. “You should be happy I’m a nice person!” I told her, shielding my face as she swung at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about this family, Peeta Mellark!” my mother snapped at me. “We are </span>
  <em>
    <span>merchants</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Our business relies on other merchants. If they don’t like refugees, then neither do we!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But why?” I asked. “Why do we have to be so mean to them?” She didn’t have an answer for me. Instead, she got a bit of a sad look on her face, and then she walked away. She didn’t look at me for the rest of the night, but I still helped her clean up from dinner in silence. When my usual part was finished and Mama started putting away the leftovers, I sat down at the table with a pencil and a piece of paper in hopes of writing a letter to Katniss, but I didn’t know how she would be able to read it. Maybe I could write it in a way she could understand, or maybe I could write what I knew in Gàidhlig and go from there.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Halò Katniss</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I started the letter, but I didn’t know where to go next. I grabbed another piece of paper with a frustrated sigh and then started to write what I wanted to see in English and maybe I could ask another refugee in town to translate it for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dear Katniss,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I like you a lot. I’m glad we’re friends. I think it’s dumb that everyone else is so mean to you. Mama says that because we’re merchants that we shouldn’t like refugees, but I don’t understand why. Every refugee I’ve ever met has always been so nice. But nevermind that. I just wanted to say that I think you’re pretty and smart and very brave. I can’t imagine how hard it was to come to a new world and having to learn a new language, but you’re very good at learning. Thanks for being my friend. You’re my best friend ever.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Love, Peeta</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>That sounded good, right? I hoped so. Maybe tomorrow, I could take it to be translated in the Hob, I knew there were a lot of refugees there. “It’s time for bed, Peeta,” Mama told me, not even looking up from scrubbing the counter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, Mama,” I said, and then I left the table, not even thinking to grab the letter off of the table. I didn’t realise it until I woke up the next morning. If Mama saw it, she’d be so mad at me! Especially since I said she didn’t like refugees! When I got out of bed to go into the kitchen, I was so scared I was gonna get hit... but when I arrived at the table, I was given a plate of pancakes and told to eat quickly or I’d be late for school. Underneath my plate was the letter I’d left behind. Had she not seen it? I pulled out the letter and realised that this was not the same letter that I wrote last night - it wasn’t even in my handwriting, nor was it even in English.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Katniss a charaid, </span>
  </em>
  <span>it began with, and then the rest of what I must have written had been translated into Gàidhlig. The letter ended with </span>
  <em>
    <span>le deagh dhùrachd, Peeta</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I couldn’t tell what was stranger, the fact that this letter had mysteriously been translated, or the fact that it looked as if the handwriting matched Mama’s. “Mama, did you do this?” I asked her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Finish your breakfast or you’ll be late,” she told me firmly, basically telling me not to question her. If Mama translated that letter, then that meant that she knew Gàidhlig, but she didn’t have an accent. Was she Hebridean? Was she a refugee or the child of one? Now that I was thinking, Mama didn’t exactly match the typical merchants of District Twelve. They were blonde with blue eyes, while Mama had a bit of a reddish hue to her hair and had silver eyes. Aunt Maidie, Mama’s sister, did, too, but we didn’t see much of her. They both could pass off as merchant... but her traits were Hebridean. Why was she so against refugees if she was Hebridean? And why didn’t the hatred against refugees make her more mad? She didn’t let me question her, however, because she disappeared into her bedroom claiming to have a headache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I arrived at school, Katniss was waiting for me in our first class and smiled when she saw me approach. I pulled my backpack off and pulled out the letter and handed it to her, and she opened it to read it. “You write in Gàidhlig?” she asked me. “It is very nice. I like you, Peeta. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Is toil leam thu.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is tohl loom?” I asked, and she nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It mean ‘I like’,” she said. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Thu</span>
  </em>
  <span> mean ‘you’. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Is toil leam thu</span>
  </em>
  <span> mean ‘I like you’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” I said. “I like you, too.” She smiled at me, and I only wished she knew that when I said I liked her, I didn’t mean I liked her just as a friend. I meant that I loved her and I wanted to be her boyfriend, but there was no way she was interested in that yet. Some of the other kids already were interested in dating, but I didn’t want to pressure her, so I simply nodded and let her believe that I just meant I liked her as a friend. Love was just too complicated to explain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want you come to my home, er... is the school, uh... </span>
  <em>
    <span>dèidh?</span>
  </em>
  <span> What is word...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...after?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, after! I want you come to my home after the school! Did I say good, yes?” I chuckled gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘I want you to come to my home after school’ is the right way to say it,” I told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh. I want you to come to my home after school,” she repeated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d love to,” I told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good! Yes!” she said cheerfully. Once classes were over for the day, I walked with her to the Everdeen home in the Seam, and for some reason, I was a little bit nervous to meet her family.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do your mom and dad know you’re bringing me over?” I asked her, not sure if she’d fully understand what I’d asked her. She was silent for a moment, then nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, I have mom and dad,” she answered, and I realised that she didn’t understand me at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are they your mom and dad?” I asked, unable to stop myself, and she paused, thinking hard to word her thoughts carefully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Big man say they are, can get trouble. They are not mom and dad,” she answered me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re not alive, are they?” I asked, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry?” she asked me. “You did not hurt them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, it’s just... something we say here, when someone’s gone through something bad,” I said, and she nodded, pretending to understand. “I know I didn’t hurt your mom and dad. I wish they were okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish, yes,” Katniss replied. We continued our walk in silence as we made our way to her home. When we arrived, she led me into the house, and at the table tending to an injured child was a blonde woman that must have been Mrs. Everdeen. She was from the merchant class, I knew that much, and she’d married Mr. Everdeen because she fell in love with his voice, much like I had with Katniss. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Halò, antaidh. Tha seo Peeta, tha e mo charaid,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she told Mrs. Everdeen, who smiled when she saw me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello, Peeta. Katniss tells me that you’re her friend,” she said to me, and I nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, I am. I’ve been helping Katniss learn English,” I told her. “Uh, it’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Everdeen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Peeta. I knew your father in school and you’re so much like him,” she told me with a smile. “I’m glad Katniss was able to find a friend in you, dear. Learning English has been so difficult for her. There are almost no similarities between the Gàidhlig language and English and having you as her friend has been very helpful for her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m glad,” I said, and then I looked at Katniss with a smile. Mrs. Everdeen said shortly after that she had to tend to a patient in the district after walking the child she had been tending to home, so Katniss and I were welcome to stay and do our homework while we waited for Mr. Everdeen, who would be finishing a shift in the mines, to bring home his and Mrs. Everdeen’s daughter, Primrose, from school. As we sat, Katniss let out a sigh, then glanced up at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I find this, er... word for ‘not fun’,” she said to me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Boring?” I asked with a chuckle. “Homework isn’t very fun at all.” I put down my pencil. “Want to just skip it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Skip? What is this ‘skip’?” she asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not do it,” I replied. “At least, not now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That does not sound like good idea, Peeta. We must do homework or we get bad grade,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, then let’s do it in a better location, like, say, the meadow?” Her ears perked up and she smiled up at me, nodding. I knew she liked the meadow, so we packed up our homework and left her house to go to the meadow. We finished our homework and then we laid in the grass beneath a willow tree, the tips of our fingers touching as we watched the wind carry the branches of the willow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is this tree called?” she asked me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This one? It’s called a willow tree,” I replied, turning my head to look at her. She was looking in awe of the tree above her, one hand resting on her stomach and the other near mine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Willow tree,” she replied. “We call this ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>sailean’</span>
  </em>
  <span> in Gàidhlig.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sah-lahn,” I repeated. We lay in silence for a moment, and then I sat up, picking a daisy on the ground beside me. “What do you call this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Neòineanag,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she replied, and then she laughed at the look on my face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come again?” I asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Neòineanag</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You say ‘nyo’...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nyo...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nyeh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nyeh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nak.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nak.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Neòineanag</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Neòineanag</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, yes, excellent! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Math fhein!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she said, giving me a cheerful clap. “We used to take the daisy and pick more and make chain of them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chains?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, yes. Chains. We used to make chains of them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of daisies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it like ‘add s at end’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, when you have a ‘y’ at the end, it turns into an ‘ies’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Daisies...” I nodded. “We used to make chains of daisies. Like... a daisy chain. Like this.” She took the daisy from my fingers and then started picking more around us and weaving them together. About ten minutes later, she had a circle of daisies, and she motioned for me to bend my head down and placed it on top of my head. When I picked my head back up, she was smiling at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are like </span>
  <em>
    <span>La Bealltainn</span>
  </em>
  <span> as human. Gold hair, and blue eyes, and a daisy crown,” she told me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure you’d look more beautiful in it,” I replied. Briefly, we met eyes, but then she blushed and glanced away from me, as if uncomfortable, and I frowned. “Katniss, I...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We must be getting to home,” she told me, and she looked up at the sun. “It is getting dark. The sun will be down soon.” I let out a sigh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. I’ll walk you home,” I told her, standing up. She didn't answer me and we walked home in silence. “Goodnight, Katniss,” I told her when she went to enter her home, and she turned to look at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodnight, Peeta. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oidhche mhath</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oy-heh vah?” I asked, hoping I pronounced it correctly. and she gave me a gentle smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, perfect,” she replied, and we each exchanged another smile before she went inside. I walked home on my own as the sun set, and when I got to my own home, the first thing my brother, Rye, who was two years older than me at eleven, noticed was the daisy chain crown that still sat on my head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look like a girl! Why do you have flowers on your head?” Rye exclaimed when he first saw me. Truth to be told, I forgot it was there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t know we had a little sister, did you, Rye?” Christos, my oldest brother who was five years older than me at fourteen, asked him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nope! Maybe we should see if he’ll fit in Mama’s dresses!” Rye replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You two will do no such thing, leave your brother alone,” Daddy told them, and I smirked at them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You two are just jealous,” I told them. “Katniss made this for me in the meadow.”</span>
</p><p>“Who, the refugee girl? You’re still hanging around her?” Rye asked me.</p><p>
  <span>“She’ll crap on your reputation, Peet. Just being around her will bring you down to at least Seam level,” Chris told me, and I rolled my eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t care. She’s nice to me and actually likes me. No one else does! Well, maybe Delly, but that’s it!” I told them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then maybe you should hang around Delly more,” Chris told me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Boys, Katniss is a nice girl and her parents are good people. There’s nothing wrong with Peeta making friends with a refugee girl,” said Daddy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As long as he doesn’t marry her, I guess it’s fine,” said Rye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who said anything about marriage?” asked Daddy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wouldn’t mind marrying her. She’s very pretty,” I said, and this made Rye and Chris laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mama would sooner die just to roll in her grave than have you marry a reffer!” Rye exclaimed, and I watched as Daddy grabbed a roll from a basket and chucked it at him, the hardened roll bouncing off the back of Rye’s head. “Ow!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you </span>
  <em>
    <span>dare</span>
  </em>
  <span> say that word in this house, Donnel Mellark. You were </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> raised like that!” Daddy shouted at him. Donnel was his real name, while Rye was just a nickname.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay! Okay! Sorry!” Rye whined. I was happy that Daddy was supportive of my friendship with Katniss, but he didn’t comment on my wanting to marry her. Perhaps he didn’t want to comment. He knew that merchants only married merchants - that’s why he married Mama. Their marriage was arranged. Mama was the grocer’s daughter, and Daddy was the baker’s son. Now, Daddy was the baker and Mama was the baker’s wife, and Chris, Rye and I are the baker’s sons. Someday, one of us would become the baker, and the other two would either marry another merchant or, if we couldn’t find marriage, end up in the mines. It’s happened before, Daddy said that the former butcher had four sons that he went to school with and three of them got married and the youngest went into the mines. Knowing that I may one day be destined to the mines as the baker’s youngest son scared me, but there was one thing about that fate that comforted me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If I went into the mines, I could marry Katniss and no one would bat an eye.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Spring 2155 - Age Eleven/Twelve</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta comforts Katniss during a dark time, reinforcing their friendship.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/><p>Sometime in the early spring - April, I believe - was when the rain clouds came. They were dark, dreary and brought in the cold with them, and so many people of District Twelve died of ailments and starvation. The Mayor kept saying that he was making his plea to the president, but his pleas were falling on deaf ears - it was like we were being left to starve to death.</p><p>In the bakery, we were suffering, too. We often didn’t have enough for our own meals, and with the mines increasing hours, the hunters were coming by less and less, including Mr. Everdeen and Katniss. I’d met him several times in mine and Katniss’s years of friendship and he was a very kind man who loved Katniss as if she were his own daughter - but perhaps that was because she was the daughter of his only sister.</p><p>“I never met him,” said Katniss to me upon a trip to the woods last summer. “Not before he left Hebridia. He was my mother’s brother. Older. She could sing like him... She did sing in the <em> cèilidhs </em> on Saturdays. I miss her voice. And her songs. She sang old folk songs to me.”</p><p>“You sing like her, you know,” I’d told her. “Beautifully, and you can make the birds stop to listen to you.” She smiled and her cheeks turned a little pink.</p><p>“I was not ever as good as my mother,” she told me. “When <em> Mamaidh </em> sang, the world could stop to listen to her. When she talk, too.”</p><p>“Talked,” I told her. While she was much better at English now than she used to be, she still slipped up occasionally.</p><p>“Talked. When she talked, people did listen,” she replied.</p><p>“I wish I could have met her,” I said, and then she turned to look at me, her beautiful silver eyes trained on my blue ones.</p><p>“She would love you,” she told me. “Did I say that right? In the past.”</p><p>“I think ‘she would have loved you’ would fit better,” I told her. She smiled, then reached between us to rest her hand over mine.</p><p>“She would have loved you, Peeta,” she told me. It was my turn to smile at her. I wanted so badly to lean over and kiss her, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it, so I shifted our hands so that my palm was flat against hers and we entwined our fingers together. She blushed, then looked forward again, down at the rocky hillside where we were sitting.</p><p>Katniss and Mr. Everdeen had a special connection and that connection was the woman that both of them had known and loved dearly - Katniss’s mother and Mr. Everdeen’s sister, Eilidh Fòlais. I was a bit surprised to learn that Katniss’s real last name was actually Fòlais, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. I knew Mr. Everdeen was her uncle, but didn’t think that Katniss’s mother was the one related to Mr. Everdeen. Another time, she showed me a picture of herself and her mother when she was five years old - her mother had sent it in a letter to Mr. Everdeen with another refugee destined for Twelve before Panem was closed off to refugees. Katniss looked happy, with her beautiful chocolate brown curls catching the wind, matching with her mother’s sunset orange curls. They were dressed in traditional Hebridean dresses - faded white cotton or muslin with a tartan cloth draped over it. Katniss looked identical to her mother, and both of them were beautiful.</p><p>So on the day that Mr. Everdeen died in the mine explosion, I knew that Katniss would be distraught. She was called out of class when the emergency siren sounded, indicating that something had gone wrong in the mines, and shortly after, the rest of us were sent home. “It’s a good thing you boys are here, there’s going to be a lot of business now,” said Mama when Rye, Chris and I arrived home.</p><p>“Mama, Katniss’s dad was in the mines when the accident happened. Can I please go see her? And can I please bring her something?” I begged my mother. Something in her had changed when Katniss and I became friends, and ever since, she was less harsh against refugees and even softer with us. She was still hard on us sometimes, but she wasn’t as bad as she used to be, and she was the softest on me out of all of us.</p><p>“I’m sure the Everdeens don’t want you to bother them today, Peeta, now please get to work on decorating some of the cakes,” she told me firmly, and then headed for the kitchen. In the doorway, she stopped, then she turned to look at me. “Tomorrow, you can bring them a loaf if we have any left over. The raisin nut, that’s the least popular.” With that said, she went into the kitchen, and I prayed to whoever was listening that we had a loaf of raisin nut bread left at the end of the day. Thankfully, we did - we actually had two - and Dad wrapped up both of them and gave them to me in a paper bag.</p><p>“Don’t tell your mother,” he told me, and then he gave me a smile and ruffled my hair. “Give the Everdeens our well wishes, and our deepest sympathies.”</p><p>“I will, Dad,” I said, and I hugged him tightly before grabbing my coat and running out in the rain towards the Seam. It was freezing, but I didn’t care as I kept the still warm loaves tightly beneath my coat. When I got to the Everdeens’ door, there was a black piece of cloth across the door, signifying that the family was in mourning, and I knocked on the door. It was Katniss that answered, and she looked at me with hardly any emotions left in her eyes. I couldn’t blame her - she’d lost her whole family of her mother, father, one sister and five brothers, and now she’s lost her uncle, the last blood relative in the world that she had.</p><p>“Now is not a good time, Peeta,” she told me.</p><p>“I know,” I said, pulling the paper bag out from inside of my coat. “I know you don’t like charity, but we had these left over and, well... they were gonna go to the pigs, but they’ll eat anything. My family and I wanted to give these to you to express how sorry we are... and I want you to know that I’m always here for you.”</p><p>“Peeta,” she said quietly, looking at the bag, and then at me. “You can’t... You said so yourself, your family... You’re hungry, too...”</p><p>“But we didn’t just lose the breadwinner of our family,” I told her. Tears welled up in her eyes again and she wiped them off on her sleeve, then she nodded and looked up at me.</p><p>“Thank you, Peeta,” she said, accepting the bag. She set it down on the floor of her porch, then wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly. “You are a very good friend,” she whispered to me. “If there’s anything I can do in return...”</p><p>“You’re already doing it,” I told her. “You’re being my best friend. And you’re hugging me, too. That’s plenty for me.” She chuckled gently, then pulled back from our embrace to look at me.</p><p>“You deserve much more than a hug,” she told me. Her cheeks were tinted pink, but she stood on her toes and leaned in to give me a kiss on my cheek. She smiled at me one more time, then picked up the bag again and went inside of her house.</p><p>I knew it was going to be hard for her family for a while. With someone as jolly and happy and full of laughter as Mr. Everdeen gone, the world was greyer and bleeker, and most of the rest of spring and the coming summer would be shrouded in clouds. As I returned to the bakery, my hands in my pockets and my honey golden curls glued to my forehead from the rain, I got a brilliant idea. I was going to ask Dad if Katniss could get a job in the bakery. Her mother was a healer (although I didn’t know that she would succumb to depression and not seek work for a couple of years), so with two breadwinners in the house, maybe Katniss and little Prim wouldn’t starve. Maybe they would be okay. I wasn’t sure if Katniss would see that as charity, either, but Katniss had been around my father and brothers enough times now to consider us good people who genuinely cared about her.</p><p>And so, I ran home with high hopes that Katniss would soon be working with me in the bakery, hoping my parents had enough heart in them to offer her a job.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Winter 2155 - Age Twelve</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta overhears his parents discussing the future of the bakery, and has a small row with Gale Hawthorn.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Around December shortly before Peeta turns 13.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Katniss did not end up working at the bakery. Mom wouldn’t allow it, claiming that we didn’t have the funds and couldn’t afford to hire another employee, even though the only employees we had didn’t even get paid and benefitted from the bakery. I was very upset because I just wanted Katniss and her family to be okay, but then it turned out that Katniss was doing just fine on her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d turned to hunting, an activity that was illegal in the district considering it was outside the fence and was considered poaching, but it provided everyone with more meat and the peacekeepers, thankfully, turned a blind eye. They couldn’t if she had a weapon, though, and thankfully, she never seemed to have one on her. She traded squirrels with my dad for loaves of bread, and sometimes, he let me take care of the trades. “I will only trade with you so long as you promise to not give me more than what it is worth,” Katniss warned me playfully, and I laughed.</span>
</p><p>“I promise, I promise. But I guess it all depends, really. To us, the squirrels are worth a lot because we like them, so make sure you’re not underselling yourself,” I told her. I’d always sneak her an extra cookie anyway, even when she traded with Dad, since I was the one who usually handed him the loaves. Not too long after she started hunting, she started coming around with another boy - a Seam boy, with dark hair, olive skin and Seam grey eyes. He was very good looking, at least according to Delly, and he and Katniss seemed to get along very well. Gale Hawthorne was his name, and I’d come to dread hearing it.</p><p>
  <span>The last time I traded with Katniss was the first time I met Gale, and his grey eyes watched me as if I were prey. “Gale, I would like for you to meet my friend, Peeta,” Katniss told Gale, who still kept his threatening eyes on me. “Peeta, this is Gale. He lives by where I live.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s nice to meet you,” I said politely, extending a hand for him to shake, but he didn’t budge. I lowered my hand, trying to not look bothered. “Er, anyway, I guess you’re here for your loaves, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, we have three squirrels I caught special for your family,” Katniss told me, pulling out the three squirrels and holding them by their fuzzy tails.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Three squirrels is good for three loaves,” I said, turning to go back inside, but Gale Hawthorne stopped me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Two loaves. They’re small and skinny. Nothing about them is worth three loaves,” he said sternly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We agreed on three loaves per squirrel,” I told him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. Two loaves, nothing more,” Gale replied. I glanced at Katniss, who seemed a bit meeker than I’d ever known her to be, and then looked back at Gale.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine... two loaves,” I said, my blue eyes meeting his. For a moment, we stared each other down before I went inside and fetched the two loaves and bringing them out, handing them to Katniss, who put them in her bag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks, Peeta. I’ll see you at school,” she told me with a smile as Gale started walking away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on, Katniss. We have to finish these trades,” he called, and she followed him. Later that day, Dad told me someone wanted to speak to me outside, and thinking it was Katniss, I went out onto the back porch area surprised to see Gale waiting for me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gale, I wasn’t expecting to see you,” I said with surprise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Leave Katniss alone. She doesn’t need you,” he told me with a warning tone. I crossed my arms across my chest and looked at him incredulously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think that’s your decision,” I told him calmly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not, but it is Katniss’s,” he replied. “She doesn’t need you corrupting her anymore.” What did he mean by ‘it is Katniss’s’? Was he saying that she told him something?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you even talking about?” I asked him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She doesn’t want you around anymore. She says you bother her and if you keep it up, you won’t like what’s coming,” Gale warned me. She told him that? She could have told me that I was bothering her... Why would she tell him and not me?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why would she tell you that?” I asked, masking the hurt in my voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe she didn’t think you’d listen to her. You give her extra things when she doesn’t ask for them. Why would she have any reason to believe you would listen to her?” Gale asked me. “Leave her alone or I’ll kick your ass.” Right as he said that last part, the door behind me opened and Rye stepped out onto the deck, overhearing Gale’s threat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Peet, Dad needs you... </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hawthorne</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he said bitterly, as if Gale’s name gave him a bad taste in his mouth. “Don’t you dare threaten my little brother, Hawthorne. I beat your ass in junior wrestling, and since you quit, I’ve gotten even better. Leave him alone.”</span>
</p><p>“So long as he leaves Katniss alone,” Gale told us both, and then he stalked off. I was completely heartbroken. Katniss didn’t want me around anymore? But I thought we were friends... Very close friends.</p><p>
  <span>“You okay, little bro?” Rye asked me, patting me on the back after noticing that I was visibly upset.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Katniss told him she doesn’t want me around anymore,” I told him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why would she say that?” Rye asked me, and I shrugged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know... I thought we were friends,” I said sadly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, little bro. If I’d known she was such a bitch, I’d have made sure she stayed away from you,” Rye told me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t say that about her,” I said, and then I turned and quickly went back into the bakery. The next day at school, I didn't sit at the table I shared with Katniss and Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter. Instead, I sat with my merchant friends, Delly and Mark Latimer, along with a couple of their friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re so quiet, Peeta. I’ve never known you to be this quiet,” Delly told me with concern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m just tired,” I told her. “Didn’t sleep well last night.” In class, I avoided Katniss, who seemed to be trying to catch my eye. Usually, I sat next to her, but I made sure to sit on the other side of the classroom. If she didn’t want to be my friend then fine, I wouldn’t be, but I wished she wouldn’t try to act like nothing happened. At the end of class, I dropped my book off the table, scattering any papers I’d had stuffed in there, so I had to stop and collect my things before leaving. I wasn’t quick enough, because Katniss stopped me just as I was about to head out the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is wrong?” she asked me, her voice laced with frustration.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As if you don’t know,” I told her, pulling my wrist from her grasp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I really don’t. Would you like to tell me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ask Gale Hawthorne,” I told her, and I turned and walked out the door. She didn’t follow me - figures. She should have known that Gale would try to protect her if they’re so close. I’ll bet she regrets telling him her feelings now. But if I bothered her so much, why would she try to talk to me when she finally noticed I wasn’t speaking to her? It didn’t make sense, but what choice did I have to believe? It was obvious that Gale and Katniss had gotten so close, so why wouldn’t she tell him all her secrets? About how she really felt about her merchant friend? Her first friend, the only friend she had when she came here speaking no English, who knew all her secrets. Needless to say, I was very hurt, and after that day, Katniss not talking to me again really solidified my belief that Gale was telling the truth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t sleep much after that. I was upset that I’d lost a friend, and I was upset that the girl I was secretly madly in love with thought I bothered her. If I bothered her so much, why would she even want to be my friend in the first place? I felt used. She used me so she could have a friend and then when she got another guy to be her friend, suddenly, I was yesterday’s news and not worth her time. The pain from that knowledge kept me awake, and I got up from bed to make a trip to the bathroom. As I quietly opened the door, so as not to wake up my brothers, I padded down the hallway. The whispered voices of my parents in the living area in the middle of the night caused me to stop in my tracks, and I couldn’t stop myself from listening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chris is eighteen now, we have to start finding him a match,” Mom was saying to Dad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s got one, Mels. He’s been with Aaricia Lennon for a long time, and she’s the mortician’s daughter. It’ll be a great match,” Dad replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But Rodney Lennon’s son died of illness this past winter and his wife is past childbearing age. Aaricia will inherit the business and so will whoever she marries. Don’t you want Chris to inherit the bakery? Rye can’t do it, and Peeta... He’s too soft,” Mom replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want Chris to run the bakery. He’s too stern and business-like, and I don’t think he’d be happy as the baker. He’d hate us forever if we didn’t let him marry Miss Lennon,” said Dad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She won’t be nineteen until 2159, Chris won’t even be able to marry her until then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So? He’ll be twenty-two, he won’t have to worry about the Marriage Bureau.” The Marriage Bureau. We learned a little bit about it in school, and heard rumours from younger siblings of bachelors who were entered into it. You could choose to enter it yourself or put your child in it, however, if you were unmarried by age twenty-five, you would be forced to enter the Marriage Bureau. What the Marriage Bureau did was to find you a match - a completely random match - within a week of you being entered. You could marry a merchant or you could marry someone from the Seam, and whoever you were matched with would be required to marry you. It was an awful system, and everyone in the district feared it because it meant marrying someone you didn’t know, but honestly, being a merchant just about meant the same thing. If, for example, Delly Cartwright was listed as the heir to inherit her father’s cobbler shop, whoever married her would have to move in and take over the shop. Women were allowed to be listed as heirs, but could not run the business - it had to be her spouse. Strategic marriages were not uncommon in the district, and I being the baker’s youngest son made me wonder if I would be forced to participate in a strategic match. To be honest, I’d always held out on being able to marry Katniss (there weren’t any legal restrictions against a merchant marrying someone from the Seam, but there were social consequences), but given what’s happened, I knew that that wouldn’t be possible anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We still have to decide who of the boys to name heir to the bakery,” Mom told Dad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have at least five years for that, Mellie,” Dad replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Five years will go by quickly. Eighteen sure did,” Mom said. “It’s unfair, all of it. We prepare the boys their whole lives to take over from us and we won’t even be ready to retire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll still be able to work in the bakery, if whoever inherits it lets us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that, but we’re still young. Young enough to run the bakery. Why does Twelve have these laws to take away the business from parents who are in their forties to give to their twenty-year-old kid?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think it’s the nation’s laws, dear. They like to keep their workforce young.” He let out a sigh. “I think Peeta should inherit the bakery.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s too soft! He’ll let anyone in!” Mom exclaimed in a hushed whisper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But he’s the best at everything. He’s better than all of us at decorating the cakes, he’s got all the recipes memorised, he keeps clean, he works efficiently... He’s the best equipped to inherit the bakery. And I believe he’s the only one of our boys who actually wants to be here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think Chris wants to work as a mortician?”</span>
</p><p>“He wants to marry Aaricia, so I think he’ll work wherever he can so long as he gets to be with her.”</p><p>
  <span>“Not every marriage is a result of love. That just doesn’t happen in town.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It can sometimes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you let Chris marry for love, then either Rye or Peeta won’t be able to. Do you think they’ll be happy about that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rye doesn’t seem to have an interest in love, and Peet... It’s hard to say, he’s still so young. We’ll sort it out, Mels. Like you said, Aaricia can’t even marry until 2159, and that’s four years away. We have time.”</span>
</p><p>“We have to name an heir by the time Peeta turns nineteen.”</p><p>
  <span>“Which is six years away. We’ll talk about it some other time... For now, let’s rest on it. It’s late.” I rushed back to the bedroom I shared with my brothers and crawled into bed before my parents found me out. Dad wanted me to inherit the bakery, and Mom just wanted one of us to inherit it. Dad wanted us to have the ability to marry for love, while Mom didn’t believe that all of us would be able to. Well, now that my chances with Katniss were over, I wouldn’t have to worry about marrying for love. I couldn’t now, because there’s no one else in the world that I love, nor would I be able to love. Perhaps I’d be perfect to inherit the bakery, because now I’m not concerned about marrying for love.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Autumn 2156 - Age Thirteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta tries to find interest in other girls.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dumb teenage boy warning!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>It was the start of Year Nine in September when I started expressing interest in other girls - or rather, started forcing myself to express interest in them. I knew that Katniss would never want me nor love me, but I would never stop loving her. She was just so perfect and beautiful and so clever and strong and I just couldn’t help but to love her, but she’d made it clear that she didn’t want me. After our last meeting almost a year ago, Katniss and I hadn’t spoken, but every so often, I would still catch her eye. I guess I couldn’t stop myself from looking at her, even though she hurt me. She was the most beautiful girl in the world and I just couldn't help myself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she wasn’t mine. She belonged to Gale, that much he made clear. Whenever I saw them together, he walked very close to her, with her on his left side and slightly behind him. He made her laugh the same way I used to make her laugh, and she always seemed to smile whenever he was around her. She stopped smiling when she was without him, and she turned quiet. She still talked to Madge occasionally, but even Madge was relatively quiet. I wanted so badly to sit with her again, to laugh with her and to practice her English and my Gàidhlig (I wasn’t fluent, but we could hold a very small and staccato conversation with one another in Gàidhlig), but she didn’t want me there, and Gale threatened to kick my ass if I came within ten feet of her again.</span>
</p><p>The first girl I ever kissed was Philomena Walters at the Midsummer Bonfire. She made a wreath to send down the stream and I caught it, but honestly, I was just catching a wreath to shut my brothers up. She seemed very happy that I’d caught her wreath and hesitantly, I asked her to the Midsummer Bonfire (it was tradition - if you caught a girl’s wreath, you had to ask her to the bonfire), which she excitedly accepted. It was her who kissed me, and I didn’t even know how to kiss a girl so I put in minimal effort, but that seemed to be enough for her. After that, she started telling everyone I was her boyfriend, and I was so numb to it all that I just went along with it.</p><p>
  <span>On the first day of school, Philomena met up with me at the entrance and took my hand, showing off to everyone that we were together. I caught Katniss’s eye as we were heading in, and she looked a combination of neutral and quite pissed off, as if she were pissed off and trying hard to hide it. Serves you right, Katniss. You have Gale to comfort you now. After seeing her angry look, I forced myself to seem like I was enjoying the relationship with Philomena, and I know that that was wrong, but I was thirteen. Aren’t we all idiots at thirteen? I would wrap my arm around her shoulders, walk her to class and kiss her in the halls. I’d hold her books for her, hold her hand and tell her she looked pretty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then one chilly day around Harvest Fest, she told me she thought I was too much, and that she liked me better when it looked like I didn’t care. She broke up with me the day before Harvest Fest, and so I went to Harvest Fest with no date and hung around Delly Cartwright and Mark Latimer, my only two friends besides my brothers. Rye threatened to beat up Philomena's older brother, Asher, but I told him not to. It wasn’t Asher’s fault, and I used Philomena to piss Katniss off. I didn’t tell him that part, but I did tell him that I didn’t really like Philomena anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next girl that expressed interest in me was Marisol Parker, who asked me if I liked her by giggling with her group of friends and then slowly approaching me. I was sitting at my desk doodling on a piece of paper when I heard the small group of girls giggling behind their hands, and I looked up at them and raised an eyebrow. Marisol Parker was a pretty girl with pure blonde hair and blue eyes, the perfect image of a merchant girl. She was the Apothecary's daughter, so I believe Katniss’s cousin (or Prim’s, I guess) and she was close friends with Althea Hammersmith, the blacksmith’s daughter, and Odelia Lawson, the district judge's daughter. Odelia and Althea pushed Marisol towards me and she approached me, her pale cheeks bright pink. “Hi, Peeta,” she said shyly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, Marisol,” I said back to her. She stood there shyly for a moment, her eyes darting around, while I kept mine on hers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you like me, Peeta?” she asked me boldly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure, you’re pretty,” I said carelessly, typical of a boy my age.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to go out with me?” asked Marisol.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” I replied, and she squealed and ran back to her friends, the three of them rushing out of the classroom. It was quite a confusing situation, really. Marisol kept her distance, though, and I assumed that meant she wasn’t interested anymore, so I just resumed what I had been doing, but then Orson Parker, Mairsol’s older brother in the year above me, stopped me as I was leaving school.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you interested in dating my sister or not? Because if you hurt her, I’ll beat your ass,” Orson threatened me. He really wouldn’t. He was on the wrestling team and he lost almost every match he participated in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She asked me if I wanted to date her and I said sure, but then she never talked to me again,” I told him calmly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s the girl, she’s not supposed to be the one making all the effort,” said Orson stupidly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” I said. “Fine. I’ll walk her home tomorrow.” And I did that, but Marisol didn’t say anything almost the whole way. When we got to her house, she stopped as if she was waiting for something, and I stood there clueless, waiting for her to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aren’t you gonna kiss me goodbye?” she asked me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess,” I said, and I leaned over to kiss her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not like that! A real kiss. On the mouth,” she said. I didn’t really want to do that, but I guess if I was dating Marisol then I needed to kiss her, so I did, and she ran inside blushing and squealing. I put minimal effort into that relationship, something that I grew to feel bad about as I got older, and eventually, Marisol stopped being interested in me. It was shortly after Samhain when I was sitting at the same desk where she had asked me out when she approached me again, Odelia and Althea in the same position behind her. “I’m breaking up with you, Peeta.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” I said, not sure what else to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you even care?” she asked me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure I do, but if it’s what you want then I’m not going to argue,” I told her. She was silent for a moment.</span>
</p><p>“I’m going to date Merx Mueller,” she said. Ah, have fun with that. He’s dumber than a pile of coal.</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” I replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodbye, Peeta,” she said to me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bye, Marisol,” I replied, and she walked back to her friends and the three of them started whispering as they clamoured out of the classroom. By myself again, I shifted the papers that had covered what I was doodling before Marisol approached me: it was a drawing of Katniss. She’d looked beautiful that day, but she looked beautiful every day. I wished so badly that I could just let her go, but I couldn’t. I loved her too much, and my heart ached knowing that I could never have her. I ran my fingers over the drawing’s face and for a moment, pretended that I was stroking her cheek, but it wasn’t the same. The desk was cold, and the cold seeped through the paper and I felt it on my finger tips. I hoped Gale made her happy.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Autumn 2158 - Age Fifteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta’s wrestling match against his brother.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I promise the errors in diction in Katniss’s speech are deliberate, I did not forget that she’s not a native speaker!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Wrestling was the physical activity that got me moving around outside of the bakery. Instead of lifting heavy bags of flour all day, I could take down boys my age and weight, boys who bullied me or my friends or boys who simply irritated me, and beat them in wrestling. It was one thing I was good at besides baking and art. At the start of Year Eleven, I did have another girlfriend, Eleora Everly, who was the optician’s daughter. The optician was the town’s eyewear maker and he knew a thing or two about testing eyes, and his three daughters, Eleora, Gilda and Amissa were all learning how to test eyesight and provide adequate corrective lenses. My dad went to see them last year, and that was how I really got to meet Eleora.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mom didn’t like the Everlys much. She didn’t think that Reedus Everly, Eleora’s father, was a man worth adding to our extended family, nor did she like the scandal that Mr. Everly’s fourth and oldest daughter, Theodora, brought onto her family about eight months ago. She’d gotten pregnant by a Seam boy, and he did right by her and married her, so I didn’t see why it was such a scandal, but apparently, it was a very bad thing, considering Mr. Everly had named her his heir. It was a long and expensive legal fight to get Theodora’s heirship transferred to one of her younger sisters, and Theodora made it even harder when she refused to transfer it, but in the end, it went to Eleora, which means that if I wanted a chance to inherit the bakery, I couldn’t marry her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that was fine, actually, because the only reason I was dating Eleora was because she was secretly dating Delly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Delly and Eleora really loved each other, but couldn’t be together because of incredibly strict anti-homosexuality laws. It was absolutely forbidden in the districts and punishable by death, even though it was celebrated and even encouraged in the Capitol. It was also socially frowned upon in the districts, so I gladly pretended to date Eleora so that she and Delly could go out without anyone batting an eye. It worked out for me, since I wouldn’t ever love anyone other than Katniss anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Katniss... My feelings for her grew stronger and stronger every day and I longed so desperately for her, but she didn’t want me, and I couldn’t have her. Gale, I’m sure, had staked his claim to her numerous times, based on what Rye had said, and rumours went around that Gale and Katniss were seeing each other. It was never openly stated, and the pair of them were never affectionate in public, but everyone knew. Or at least suspected. I don’t know. I love her and she doesn’t love me back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had heard, however, that Katniss was trading less, but my family truly didn’t notice - apparently, we are one of few people that Katniss was still trading with. A couple of years ago, Katniss became an apprentice of the district midwives and now was busy working with them delivering babies in the district. It kept her busy and it kept her away from Gale, and even more importantly, it gave her merchant status. A lot of merchant marriages were contracted, so maybe...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. That wouldn’t be fair, not when she loves </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. No matter how much I love her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’ve distracted myself again. Wrestling. Wrestling is what I’m talking about. Anyway, I was one of the best wrestlers on the team, although honestly, I wasn’t sure why we had a single team. We only ever wrestled each other and it wasn’t like we could go to other districts and wrestle with their schools. But we were called a team, even though it made no sense, and I had the second best record on the ‘team’ - Rye had the first. On a particularly warm day in September, Rye and I were set to face each other for the first time. We were finally in the same weight category so we could finally face each other, and for the entire day, he was trying to rub in my face that he was better than me. “We’ll see about that when I tarnish your record,” I warned him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tarnish my record? Ha! Good luck with that, little bro. You’ll need it,” he told me, ruffling my hair. We were almost the same height, but Rye was seventeen, almost eighteen, and I was fifteen, almost sixteen. He hadn’t grown much in recent months, while I, on the other hand, gained an entire inch in the last two months. At the rate I was growing, I would soon surpass him in height, and then I wouldn’t be his ‘little’ bro anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As I headed into the gym dressed in my usual wrestling attire and made my way to the center, where Rye and I would wrestle, my eyes drifted around the room to see who was there - and my eyes landed on Katniss sitting in the bleachers with Madge. She looked so beautiful, just as she always had. Her hair was in its usual braid and her silver eyes were trained on me, of all people - our eyes met just for a moment before her cheeks got a tint of pink and she turned her gaze away. Her Hebridean genes made her ivory-skinned; she’d said once that it was always cloudy in Hebridia, so most of the people there were so pale so they could get as much sunlight as they could possibly get. Because her cheeks were so pale, it was easy to see the pink that appeared on her cheeks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was so distracted that I didn’t hear the coach’s whistle, nor did I notice that Rye had tackled me to the ground. I tried my best to fight back and gain the upper hand, but he’d caught me by surprise and I was too thrown off guard. He had me pinned in no time, and the coach called it. Rye had won the match, and I lay on my back humiliated that Katniss watched me fail to my own brother.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was no secret that I was one of the best wrestlers in school. It really helped to have two older brothers, so I practiced at home a lot, and maybe Katniss came because she’d heard and wanted to see me win. Maybe. I didn’t want to get too hopeful. The crowd was cheering for Rye, and I just got up and quickly left the gym, not wanting to be seen by everyone who just watched my older brother kick my ass. I went into the hallway and leaned against a windowsill, pulling the padded helmet off of my head and sitting it down on the windowsill. I couldn’t breathe suddenly. It felt like the walls were closing in on me and everything started getting darker and darker and-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Peeta?” Everything stopped. Someone had spoken to me. Who? Someone - a girl - came after me when I left the gym in a hurry. Was it Delly? Probably. She was my closest friend and probably saw what happened and felt bad for me. She’d heard me hype up this match all week and heard me talk out of my dick when I kept saying I’d kick Rye’s ass. There’s no way it would be Katniss. She didn’t care about me anymore, all she cared about was Gale. She didn’t notice me anymore, she didn’t like me, she only used me to help her learn English and be a friend because she had no one. Maybe I should have listened to everyone when they said she was bad news. But I just couldn’t. That’s not me. I’m not like everyone else. They all hated her because of where she came from, but I couldn’t do that. No... No, I loved Katniss, and her strength and compassion, her love of nature and her fiery spirit. But she didn’t love me. There was no way that she was the one who followed me out. No possible way. I felt a small hand on my shoulder, and when I turned expecting to see Delly’s humble blue eyes...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...I was met by silver ones, framed by strands of chocolate brown hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pulled her hand away and took a step back, giving me space. “Are you okay, Peeta?” she asked again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You care?” I asked her somewhat harshly, and she appeared wounded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why would not I?” she asked quietly. I paused for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wouldn’t... and you didn’t for the last two years,” I told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is not true,” she whispered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve said and done nothing to indicate otherwise,” I replied, clearly upset. She wiped the pained expression off of her face and steeled her expression.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay or not?” she asked me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine. I’ve lost matches before,” I told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But not in a long time, and not to your brother.” She knew about that? I paused, confused as to how she could have known. If she didn’t care, how did she know about all of my matches? How did she know I’d never lost to my brother?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never even wrestled against him before,” I told her neutrally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you seemed so confident you would win. I really thought you could,” she said. Excuse me? That was incredibly rude.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh really? Didn’t expect me to be weak and incompetent, did you? Everyone else seems to,” I said harshly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Peeta, that is not what I meant!” she exclaimed, her steeled expression turning to one of panic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure it wasn’t,” I said, and I turned and started walking away from her back towards the gym.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Peeta, I swear it was not! I’m sorry!” she called after me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to hear it, Katniss!” I said angrily, but I was more hurt than anything. Katniss was the one person in the world who I would have thought would never think me weak, but even that turned out to be untrue. In that moment, I wanted to do everything I could to fall out of love with her, but I knew how difficult that was. I’d been trying for years. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life trying to force myself to hate the woman I loved, and it would make me miserable.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <strong>KATNISS POV</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>I watched as Peeta quickly left the gymnasium after he had lost the game to his brother. Poor, poor thing, he looked so upset. Maybe I should not have come. He was distracted by me. He looked right at me and did not even seem to hear the whistle, nor did he see his brother’s attack coming. Rye was harsh to him, too. Peeta looked like he was in a lot of pain, but Rye did not seem to care, and when he won, he was laughing at Peeta, and then Peeta got up and left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, poor thing!” Madge said beside me. “Rye can be so mean!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe someone should go and check on him,” I said to her, and then I stood. “I will come right back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have fun! He’ll probably be all </span>
  <em>
    <span>hot and sweaty</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she told me with a wink, and I rolled my eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think a shag is something he is after, Madge,” I told her, and then I climbed down the bleachers. Madge seemed to have an eye for Peeta, and honestly, I could not blame her. Peeta grew up to be so handsome and attractive, with his beautiful blonde curls and toned muscles from years of working in a bakery. The baker’s sons were all toned and muscles, but on Peeta, it looked the best. He filled out so nicely over the years... and I only wished that I had not put myself off of relationships.</span>
</p><p>There were many nights when I could not sleep because I couldn’t help but wonder what kissing him would feel like. I hated Philomena Walters, Marisol Parker, Eleora Everly and every girl who ever had the privilege to hold him in their arms and feel his lips on theirs, but I told myself that I simply thought they were not right for him. I mean, I did not think that, but I would not admit that, at the time, I loved him so much that I was childishly jealous of them. But Peeta, for some reason, stopped wanting to be friends with me very suddenly, around the time that Gale came into my life. Maybe he thought Gale was my boyfriend and he did not like Gale? Wait - did that mean? No. No getting hopes up. I did not even want to suggest that to myself in fear that I would change my opinion on relationships.</p><p>
  <span>Maybe for him, though, I would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anywho, I followed him out of gymnasium and into the hallway and gasped the moment I saw him. He was leaning over the flat thing beneath a window - I do not know what that thing called - and he looked so... What is the word that Madge always uses? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sexy.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He looked so </span>
  <em>
    <span>sexy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and I felt disgusted with myself for thinking that, but I could not help it. His wrestling uniform was tight against his body and the curve of his buttocks were </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> visible, and it was incredibly attractive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I had to shake that thought from my head. He was in distress, clearly, and he needed a friend. “Peeta?” I asked, seemingly interrupting his thoughts. He froze, and after a moment of no response, I gently touched his shoulder. He slowly turned to look at me, his face neutral but his eyes pained. “Are you okay, Peeta?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You care?” he asked harshly, and I took a step back. Clearly, coming to check on him was the wrong idea. I probably should have just Eleora do it - she was his girlfriend, after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why would not I?” I asked quietly. I still cared about our friendship, even if he didn’t. He let out a sigh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wouldn’t... and you didn’t for the last two years,” he told me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is not true,” I whispered back to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve said and done nothing to indicate otherwise,” he said, and I tried to hide the pain in my face. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>have done nothing to indicate that? He did not want me around, clearly, so I gave him space. He must have changed his opinion on refugees - the only people he talked to now were merchants. I steeled my face - he was not going to see that he hurt me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay or not?” I asked him firmly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine. I’ve lost matches before,” he replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But not in a long time, and not to your brother,” I told him. I had seen some of his matches before, but he likely never noticed I was there. I did not go out of my way to make myself noticeable. I always kept my eye on him because I cared about him, but perhaps I should not have done that. He clearly does not appreciate it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never even wrestled against him before,” he said after a moment with no emotion.</span>
</p><p>“And you seemed so confident you would win. I really thought you could,” I said. I meant no harm by it, only agreeing that I was confident that he could win, too. He was strong and sturdy, and I knew that he was good at wrestling, so I genuinely believed in him. I still believed in him. Just because he lost this time did not mean that I did not think he could do it. He did not like that, however, and his eyes went from pained to furious.</p><p>
  <span>“Oh really? Didn’t expect me to be weak and incompetent, did you? Everyone else seems to,” he said very harshly, and my heart dropped and my eyes widened as I realised I had said the wrong thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Peeta, that is not what I meant!” I exclaimed, panicking. He thought I was being mean! I was not at all! He knows I have trouble with English still, or at least he should have an idea. I still had trouble with what words were appropriate when and how to say things.</span>
</p><p>“I’m sure it wasn’t,” he said with narrow eyes, and he turned and started walking back towards the gymnasium.</p><p>“Peeta, I swear it was not! I’m sorry!” I called after him, but he was beyond listening to me.</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to hear it, Katniss!” he said angrily, and he disappeared into the gymnasium again. Oh, Peeta... I had hurt him, and now there was no chance of fixing our friendship. He did not seem to want to fix it anyway. Whatever happened, whether it was something I did or he did, there was no fixing it. Peeta was lost to me, and if he wanted to be cold to me then I would be cold to him. I did not go back into the gymnasium - instead, I met Gale in the woods, and we went hunting. Hunting was my solace, and the only thing that distracted me from thinking about Peeta.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most of the time.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Summer 2159 - Age Sixteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta and Katniss work on rekindling their friendship.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Features snippets from the chapter ‘Imbolc - 2159’ in ‘part two’ of this piece titled ‘The Sabbats of District Twelve’.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>I told myself a thousand times that I just had to ignore Katniss, never look at her again and then maybe - just maybe - I’d get over her. There was no guarantee that that would actually happen, but at least I could try. I kept up that mentality for four months before throwing that tactic out the window on Imbolc. I’d gone to the Imbolc Bonfire with the intention of hanging out with my friends, but instead, I found Katniss sitting alone by the bonfire. When I sat down beside her, she asked me where my friends were. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m not sure,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> I told her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t know where Delly or Mark are... but you’re sitting right here, so at least I know where one is.”</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“We’re friends, are we?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> she’d asked with a tone of disbelief. She was right to not believe me, as I had been so upset by her and Gale that I pushed her away, but I never stopped caring about her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Well, yeah... Katniss, I’m not sure what happened between us, but... I never stopped being your friend, even if you stopped being mine.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to say, really. She did try a couple of times since I found out about her and Gale, and I kinda knew what happened between us (did I?) and I was the one to push her away. But she’d thought we weren’t friends. I guess we weren’t. Being a teenager is complicated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Why are you so kind to me? I never understood it,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> she asked me. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“You used to get bullied and beaten for talking to me, but that never stopped you. Why?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Does it really have to be said?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> I asked her quietly. She told me then that Gale wanted to marry her, and then told me how she never wanted to get married.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“...but girls who aren’t married get signed up for the marriage bureau when they’re twenty-five... Even Seam girls.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hopefully, I’ll be out of here by then.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sorry, what? Out of here? Nobody leaves the district. We don’t even get to see the other districts, we only hear about them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You want to leave?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> I asked her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Everything that District Twelve demands of its women aren’t meant for me, and neither is anything else.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“But what about your family?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You know the truth about my family. Prim has merchant blood, she’ll marry a nice merchant man and run an apothecary and be a great healer, and her mum will work with her.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“But what about your friends?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>It was a loaded question. If she didn’t want to marry Gale, I was confused on where she stood with him, but more importantly, I wanted to know what she meant about me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Madge will marry some mayor’s son from another district, Gale will find someone else...”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And me?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” I couldn’t resist asking. She paused, then looked up at me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You don’t need me, Peeta,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>she told me, and then she left, and while our conversation ended on a somber note, it was the start of a renewed friendship between us. We didn’t really talk much for a few months after that, and the next time we did, I was visiting my Aunt Maidie at the grocery and delivering something for my mother, and Katniss came down the stairs in her midwifery uniform, a mustard yellow cotton dress with a grey wool cape, carrying a bag.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“False labour, I’m afraid, Mrs. Flipper. Alice still isn’t due for a couple of weeks,” she said as she came down the stairs, and then she paused when she saw me. “Oh, hello, Peeta. I wasn’t expecting to see you here!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know my nephew?” said Aunt Maidie to her, and Katniss nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We go to school together. We’ve been friends for years,” I told my aunt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, that’s excellent. Well, then I’m sure you wouldn’t be opposed to walking young Miss Everdeen back to the clinic, would you?” Aunt Maidie asked me.</span>
</p>
<p>“It really isn’t far, I can take myself-” Katniss said somewhat nervously, but Maidie cut her off.</p>
<p>
  <span>“These streets can be dangerous at night, I won’t have it any other way. And I’d like it if he walked you home, too, if you don’t have to work after this,” Maidie said, and my cheeks flushed a little pink at embarrassment - the same shade as Katniss’s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er... all right,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You make sure she gets home safe, Peeta Mellark!” Aunt Maidie called after us as we left the grocer, and Katniss went straight to the bicycle that was exclusively used by the midwives to attach her bag to it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry about my aunt, she... Well, one of her daughters got attacked late one night and she’s extra protective of the girls of the district,” I said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s all right, although I can make a fairly quick getaway on my bicycle,” Katniss told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it hard to ride?” I asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not really. You’ve just got to learn to balance,” she replied. She connected her bag to it and then stood it upright, and the two of us started walking towards the clinic, which was on the edge of town near the Seam. “So... is Mrs. Flipper your Dad’s sister or your Mum’s?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mom’s. Dad’s sister died in childbirth before I was born. Her daughter is Eloise Finch, her father works in the Justice Building,” I told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s in Gale’s year, I think. He’s mentioned her a few times. I thought he had a crush on her for a while.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“While he had his little crush on you?” Katniss let out a small laugh, and it was the most beautiful laugh I’d ever heard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think he ever gave up on that, but he didn’t like being lonely, so he set his feelings for me aside to pursue other women. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lots</span>
  </em>
  <span> of other women.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can’t say that surprises me. I’ve heard the rumours.” We walked in silence for a moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mrs. Flipper is Hebridean, yes?” she asked suddenly, and I raised an eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think so,” I said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really? I wonder who she learned Gàidhlig from,” Katniss replied.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Learned Gàidhlig? Does she speak it?” I asked, now confused. I never knew Aunt Maidie to speak Gàidhlig.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, we had a full conversation in it. She’s completely fluent. And Maidie is a Hebridean name.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s my mom’s older sister,” I said, and I tried to search through my memories to find out if I’d known Maidie spoke Gàidhlig. There was nothing that stuck out to me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lots of people, merchant and Seam, surprisingly know a lot of Gàidhlig. I suppose because of how many Hebrideans there are here,” Katniss told me, interrupting my thoughts. “Remember when we were kids and you wrote me that wee note in Gàidhlig? I thought that was so cool. Where did you learn to write that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Write you a letter in Gàidhlig? I don’t think I ever knew enough to be able to write you something like that,” I said, and then I paused when I finally remembered that note. I’d come back to it at breakfast after abandoning it on the table. I’d written it first in English and I was going to go to the Hob to find someone to translate it into Gàidhlig for me, but it had already been done... by my mother. Of course it had to be my mother who translated it! If Maidie spoke Gàidhlig fluently, it made sense that my mother spoke it fluently, too, but why did she never use it in the house? And if she was Hebridean, why would she hide that? “I think... I think my mother translated it...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mrs. Flipper told me her mother was a Hebridean refugee,” Katniss told me. “That’s why I was so surprised when you said she was your aunt. Your mother is famous among refugees and their children for hating them, but if she’s the child of one...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know. I can ask her, but I don’t know. She’s never mentioned anything about it,” I said, and then I looked at her, suddenly realising that my mother had eyes a similar shade to Katniss’s. “She’s got Hebridean eyes...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Silver eyes are a trait of Hebridia,” Katniss told me. “It’d be a shame if she’s ashamed of her heritage. Hebridean culture is fascinating.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And the people who come from Hebridia are beautiful,” I said, unable to stop the words from coming out of my mouth, and I blushed the second they did. Thankfully, we had arrived at the clinic. “Um... Here we are, I guess... Do you... want me to walk you home, too?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m working the overnight shift tonight so I won’t be leaving the clinic unless I’ve got a birth to attend,” she told me, and I nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wow, I... I didn’t even realise how good your English has gotten...” I said suddenly. “Sorry, I...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s fine,” she said. “Working as a midwife and seeing so many people has really helped. I’ve learned a lot from speaking to them. Of course, I still have issues with words and such...” She glanced around her and then pointed at a bucket on the ground. “I still don’t know what that is called in English.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A bucket,” I said with a smile, and she looked at me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bucket,” she repeated. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Cuinneag</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Coon-yak,” I repeated after her, and we shared a gentle chuckle. It was a good memory from when we were kids, and we spent so much time just pointing at things and saying what they were in English and Gàidhlig and then repeating each other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’d best get back in, and you’d best get home. If the streets are dangerous for the girls of Twelve, I can’t imagine it’s too much safer for the boys,” she told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I guess I should go,” I said. “It was nice seeing you again, Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You, too,” she told me as she locked up her bicycle, and then she stood and faced me, the soft smile she’d had on her face now faded and her eyes averted. “Say hello to Eleora for me...” Damn it. I forgot I was still ‘dating’ Eleora. I knew that I could trust Katniss with the truth, but really, it wasn’t my place to tell Delly and Eleora’s secret. I nodded with a sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will,” I said, disappointed with her reminding us both that I technically wasn’t single. “Goodnight, Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goodnight, Peeta,” she said, and then she went into the clinic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Midsummer was around the corner, and like I was expected, I caught Eleora’s wreath in the river and asked her to the Midsummer Bonfire, but that night, when we pretended to sneak off to be together in private, I told her that I couldn’t do our relationship anymore. I cared about her and Delly a lot, but I saw hope in my exchange with Katniss and if I wanted that tiny little glowing ember to turn into a flame, I had to end what I had with Eleora, and she politely agreed. “It’s starting to get very close to my time to take over my father’s work, anyway,” she told me. She was actually a year older than me at seventeen. “I can’t date Delly in secret forever... My father named me heir and as soon as Amissa turns nineteen, I’ll take over the business, and I need a husband to do that. Silly that that’s what I have to do, isn’t it? That I just can’t take over the business on my own?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve heard what they’ve said in Home Economics class,” I told her, and then I did my best impression of our very sexist teacher, Mr. Lanley. “‘Women can’t run a business when they’re emotional and they </span>
  <em>
    <span>especially</span>
  </em>
  <span> can’t when they’re pregnant.” Eleora laughed and playfully whacked me on the arm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, it really is stupid, and so untrue,” she said. “So... Are you going to pursue Katniss?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How do you know about that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Delly and I have no secrets,” Eleora told me. “You’d be good together, you know... and when you take over the bakery, she’ll make an excellent baker’s wife.” My parents had named me heir not long after Chris turned nineteen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I doubt my mother will let me marry Katniss,” I told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It doesn’t matter. You’re heir, no matter who you marry, you’ll be inheriting the bakery. She can try to have it changed if she likes, but being the woman, your mother won’t have a say. It’s your father’s choice, and he’s such a kind man. He’ll let you marry Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss doesn’t even want to get married.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, she has to. It’s the law. Every man and woman must be married and if she isn’t by the time she turns twenty-five, she’ll be automatically entered into the Marriage Bureau or they’ll kill her to set an example.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, that’s what I’m worried about. I don’t want to force a marriage on Katniss,” I’d said, but honestly, I think that perhaps I’d marry her just to prevent her from having to register with the Marriage Bureau, unless she leaves before that. I didn’t want her to leave, but if it was what made her happy, then I couldn’t deny her that. I had a few years to try to change her mind... and propose my plan.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If I marry her, she won’t have to marry anyone. We’ll have to have two children by law, yes, but she wouldn’t have to have any hand in raising them if she didn’t want to, or she could have any man’s children if she so wanted and we could pretend that they were mine. Even Gale’s, if that’s what she wanted...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Living in District Twelve was hell in more ways than just starvation and imminent death in the coal mines.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Autumn 2160 - Spring 2161 - Age Seventeen/Eighteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Katniss struggles with growing into a society that expects her to marry.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Midsummer mention will be elaborated later on in ‘The Sabbats of District Twelve’!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p>
  <strong>KATNISS POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>It was autumn, a year after Peeta and I started improving our friendship again. I missed him dearly, and still couldn’t figure out where we had gone wrong, but I didn't care, because he was my friend again. That Midsummer, he made me make a wreath for him to run and once he’d made sure he caught it, he made a big spectacle of asking me to the Midsummer Bonfire, even though we were just very close friends. We danced together at the bonfire and walked around together and quite honestly, it was a near perfect night. It would have been perfect had we shared a kiss, but I didn’t want to lead him on or give myself false hope.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I knew I loved him, and I was starting to believe that by allowing myself to love him, I was giving myself the chance to change my opinion of marriage or changing my plan to run off into the woods, but I reasoned with myself that if and when I do run away, I’ll never see Peeta again and I should enjoy what little time I have left with him. I wanted to run away before he married, because I just didn’t think that I’d be able to stomach the idea of him being married to anyone but to me, and I was not going to get married.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One warm autumn day, we laid on the grass of the meadow together looking up at the sky. The ground was warm, but the air had a slight chill to it, so we wore our jackets and laid close together. Peeta pointed up at a cloud, drawing my attention to it. “That one kind of looks like a dog, doesn't it?” he asked me, and I smiled at his childlike imagination. I couldn’t see what his eyes could see - all I saw was the puffy white cloud above us - but I nodded anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can see that a bit,” I told him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You do not,” he teased.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How do you know what I see, huh? You’re not connected to my eyes!” I teased back, and he laughed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know when you’re lying,” he told me, and then he turned his head to look at me. “I know you so well, Katniss.” I turned my head a little to look at him, and my smile faded just slightly when our eyes met. “You know... I wish I could freeze this moment and be here with you forever...” Oh, no. I had to deflect this, even though it made my heart sing to hear it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Time doesn’t work like that, Peeta,” I said, turning my attention back to the sky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” he said with a hint of sadness in his voice. “That doesn’t mean I can’t wish it would.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What would happen to your bakery if you did freeze it, hm?” I asked him, not even thinking when I asked it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, if time is frozen, then that means the bakery will be, too, so I think it’ll be fine,” he replied, letting out a sigh and then turning his eyes to the sky again. “I hate what District Twelve has done to us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s it done to us?” I asked him, genuinely curious to hear what he had to say.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s driven a wedge between us,” he told me. “You don’t want to get married... and I don’t want to marry anyone but you.” My eyes widened, and he was silent for a moment. I had thought, more wishfully than realistically, that he might have had some feelings for me, but I had no idea how deep those feelings actually went. Now I realised that they were as deep as mine were, and that scared me because then it meant that my feelings for him were real. “I have to marry to keep the bakery in the family, but I don’t want to marry just anyone, Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t marry me. You have to marry a merchant,” I said neutrally.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s no law saying my wife has to be a merchant, I just have to get married,” he said back, equally neutrally. “However, your job as a midwife makes you a merchant.” I tried to hide my frightened look as I turned my head slightly away from him, but then I heard him shift as he turned his head to look at me. “Katniss...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t, Peeta,” I told him in a hushed whisper.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I’m not getting married. I’m running away from here and I’m never coming back. I want to be alone. I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be alone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think that’s true.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, it is, so deal with it.” He paused for a moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can stop you, you know.” I looked at him. He could stop me, actually. He could tell my plan to run away to Agnessa or worse, the peacekeepers, and they’d arrest me for even thinking of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But you won’t,” I told him. “You’re too good to do that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” he whispered to me, and then he looked back away from me. “I had to try at least once...” After a moment, I sat up, and Peeta’s eyes followed me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think we can see each other anymore, Peeta,” I told him, and this made him sit up, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have to marry to keep the bakery and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>cannot</span>
  </em>
  <span> marry me. It’s best if we stopped seeing each other completely,” I said as I stood up, and he grabbed my hand to stop me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t you think I know that? Just because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to marry you, Katniss, doesn’t mean that I think I can. I’ve already started meeting with families to discuss a marriage contract... Katniss, please, I don’t think I can get through this if you’re not my friend.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think I can continue on as I’d like if I don’t,” I hissed at him, pulling my hand away as if he’d burned it. “Do you think that I can watch you marry someone else? Absolutely not! So I’ll be out of here before you’re even engaged, sometime after school ends. What we’ve had, Peeta, was nice, but it’s over. We’re becoming adults and we have responsibilities that we need to participate in.” I paused, my silver eyes meeting his glistening blue ones. “Goodbye, Peeta...” I turned and started walking away, but I couldn’t get away fast enough. He apparently stood and ran after me, grabbing me by the wrist, turning me around, taking my face in his hands and pressing a firm kiss against my lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I wanted so badly to fight him off, but his lips held me captive. He was such an excellent kisser and kissing him just felt so </span>
  <em>
    <span>right</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It was like our lips fit together perfectly. Feeling his soft, warm hands on my face while his soft, warm lips kissed mine, I could feel myself getting faint, and the sweet aroma of cinnamon, dill and just </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> was clouding my head, causing me to lose my ability to think. He was the one that broke the kiss, and I knew then that he saw through me completely and he knew that I loved him, same as he loved me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marry me, Katniss,” he begged me again, and I felt tears stinging my eyes. His thumb wiped away one tear that escaped and rolled down my cheek, and I shook my head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t,” I whispered. “Goodbye, Peeta.” I pulled myself from his arms and turned on my heel, walking away from the only man in the world I could truly love. But that was what was so dangerous, wasn’t it? Love. I couldn’t love him. I could be torn apart in an instant if he were taken from me. Love was one of those things that people used to control others with. If I stuck around - if I married him - then someone could hurt him to get to me, if they so desired it. He could die and I would lose my will to live. I just couldn’t love him, but I just couldn’t stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I told Gale the next time I saw him, that following Sunday, and he laughed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Peeta Mellark, the baker’s son, proposed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” he asked me with a laugh, and I narrowed my eyes at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is that so bad?” I asked him, wondering what he was implying.</span>
</p>
<p>“No! If he likes you, then he has good eyes, but what I meant was merchants don’t propose to the Seam. They marry each other, keeping their stupid heads blonde and keeping themselves rich,” Gale told me.</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know, the merchants really aren’t as rich as you think they are,” I told him. I’d delivered plenty of merchant children over the years and met many families that didn’t have sufficient food or even clean water. Sometimes, they couldn’t afford to heat their homes in the winter and sometimes, they couldn’t afford new clothes to replace their tattered ones.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But they’re comfortable, aren’t they?” Gale asked me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is anyone in Twelve comfortable?” I asked him, and he scoffed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They still have it better. They don’t have to go into the mines,” he said with disgust.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Some do, if they can’t marry into a family that inherits a business.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If and only if.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not like it matters. I’ll be leaving all this behind, soon.” He paused his scoffing and eyed me suspiciously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” he asked me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just that. I’m running away, soon as school is over and they stop paying attention to me,” I told him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t do that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can and I will.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What about me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What </span>
  <em>
    <span>about</span>
  </em>
  <span> you? You’ve done fine without me and you’ll find someone to keep you entertained. You seem to have no trouble with that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I asked you to marry me, Katniss. We’d make a great team.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t need you, and I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> getting married. I’ve told you this dozens of times but you still can’t seem to get it into your thick skull.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not? Why won’t you marry me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I don’t want to.” I turned my attention to find him scowling at me, and I returned that scowl. “Don’t take it personal. I don’t want to marry anyone.” I looked away from him. “I told Peeta no, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But you didn’t want to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” I looked at him again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t want to tell that townie no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He has a name, and you don’t know what the hell I want.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you care that I use his name, which is why I know that you didn’t want to say no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck off, will you? I’m sick of having this conversation with you. How many times do I have to say?” I stood up, wanting to be far away from him. “No marriage, no children. None of it. I do not want something of that sort.” Whenever I got flustered or frustrated, I struggled to maintain speaking good English. He, too, stood up, and faced me with a frigid look on his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll change your mind,” he said, and he stalked off into the woods.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t,” I called after him. “If Peeta couldn’t change my mind, then neither can you!” I was furious with Gale. How dare he assume he knows me?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I didn’t speak to him after that. I hunted every day but Sunday and I kept myself busy at the clinic examining the women of the district and running the monthly pregnancy tests if I wasn’t delivering a baby. This went on for months until the world awoke from its winter slumber and turned into spring. I’d been making plans for months to pack up what little I had, say my goodbyes to Prim and leave in the dead of night, but it seemed that anything I wanted wasn’t going to be given.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Katniss, we need to talk,” Agnessa told me as I came in from a shift at the clinic late one night in April. May was just around the corner and the nights were beginning to warm up again, but the inside of our house that night gave me chills.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can I change first?” I asked, and Agnessa shook her head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have a seat,” she said firmly, in the most motherly way she’d ever spoken to me before. I did as I was told, eyeing her suspiciously as a prey would a predator. “I found out some news today, but before I tell you what that is, is there anything you want to tell me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t treat me like a bloody child,” I told her. “You’ve made it damn clear you don’t want to be a mother to me, so don’t act like it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then don’t act like a child if you don’t want to be treated like one,” she replied firmly. “I heard from Gale today that you’re planning on running away. Skipping out on marriage and every responsibility you have here.” My stomach dropped and my eyes widened. Gale fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>told</span>
  </em>
  <span> her? After months of nothing between us, he decided today of all days to rat me and my plan out? “Mhm, that’s what I thought,” said Agnessa when she saw my reaction.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to get married,” I told her in Gàidhlig. We hardly speak our native language in the house - well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> native language, as Agnessa’s parents were refugees - but I knew that I would have no stable ground if I spoke in English. “I don’t want to have children. I don’t want to be trapped in a home or within these damn gates. I won’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Speak English, Katniss,” said Agnessa firmly. “It doesn’t matter what you want or don’t want. We all have responsibilities that we need to take on and it’s almost time for you to take on yours. You will marry a man - I don’t care who - and you will not leave this district.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or what?” I asked daringly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll report you to the peacekeepers. I’m sure you’d find imprisonment a suitable alternative to marriage,” she replied. How could she do this to me? She wasn’t even my mother, how could she force this on me?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you hate me?” I asked her. “Ever since I was a child - ever since I came here - you have not liked me. Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never disliked you, Katniss, and I don’t hate you. But I won’t have you being irresponsible. You’ve always been so stubborn and never wanted to listen. You do realise that your actions will reflect on us, don’t you? On myself and Prim. You have no idea what your running away could cause for us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What would it cause, then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We don’t know. No one’s ever dared to try,” she replied. “Don’t make us find out, Katniss. You have a choice in who you marry. If you want my opinion, I believe Gale to be a suitable choice, but I know that if I say that, you won’t simply because I told you to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>never</span>
  </em>
  <span> marry Gale. Not after this,” I said firmly. Not after he betrayed me...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, you’ve got a year to decide, because I’ll be entering you into the Marriage Bureau when you turn nineteen,” said Agnessa.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t do that!” I exclaimed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can and I will. Consider it your punishment for even thinking to do something so foolish and dangerous,” she replied sternly. “Think it over. If I find you’ve run off, I’ll report you to the peacekeepers and they’ll be after you in the woods, and that’s a crime punishable by death.” With that said, Agnessa left and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and I slid down onto the floor trying my best to suppress the tears and my sobs so she couldn’t hear me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What was I going to do? I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> marry Gale. How could he betray me like this? I thought we were friends! And why did he wait so long to do it? I guess we weren’t friends, actually, considering we hadn’t spoken since November, but how could he do this? I had to marry someone before I was nineteen or I would be forced to marry a total stranger, likely one who was twenty-five or older.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Would Peeta still marry me? Was his offer of marriage still open? I never stopped loving him, even though I pushed him away, and I could never get my mind off of that kiss. It was easier that way, and I told myself that it would hurt less but truthfully, it hurt so much more. But I broke his heart when I pushed myself away and rejected his proposal. Madge told me that she’d never seen him look so sad before, but it couldn’t have been helped. Had I been able to run away, I would have never seen him again. That small bit of hope inside of me, however, was crushed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I’d forgotten that he was already engaged to Delly Cartwright.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Winter - Spring 2161 - Age Eighteen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peeta must marry in order to keep the business, and Katniss must now marry or else face imprisonment.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p>
  <strong>PEETA POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>On my eighteenth birthday, my parents sat me down at the dining room table, each of them sitting across from me. “Peet, it’s about time,” my father began, his hands clasped in front of him. “In one year, you’ll be nineteen years old, which means that you’ll be old enough to inherit the bakery. Your mother and I would prefer you were married before you turn nineteen to make the transition easier, but if you’re not ready yet, we still have a few more years before you legally have to marry in order to take over. You understand that you do </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> have to get married right now, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, Dad,” I said without emotion. Ever since Katniss told me that she wouldn’t marry me, I hadn’t been able to express much emotion. I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her - I had to see how she’d react - and she seemed like she’d liked it, but she still told me that she wouldn’t marry me. It was hard to live in the same district as the girl I loved more than anything in the world who didn’t want me, but she would be gone soon, and then maybe I’d be able to move on. But until then, I couldn’t, but I still had to find a wife.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ve seen many families with eligible girls over the last few months and they’re quickly dwindling. You need to pick one, Peeta,” Mom said, opening a notebook in which she’d taken notes on the merchant girls of the district. “Althea Hammersmith was informed that her brother will be inheriting the blacksmith’s so she’s available. Then there’s Clara Donner, the florist’s daughter. Her brother will also be inheriting the florist so she’s available. Norah Remington from the cafe, Delly Cartwright from the cobbler...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Delly. Delly and Eleora were still seeing each other, but with Eleora inheriting the optician’s and marrying Adriel Lewis, the butcher’s son who would not be inheriting the business, and with Delly’s brother being named heir of the cobbler, it was going to be more difficult for them to be together. With Delly’s brother inheriting the cobbler, it meant that she had to find a husband who was inheriting a business, and I was a single man who was inheriting a business, and who knew Delly and her secrets, so I was probably the best option for her. It wouldn’t be a completely loveless marriage... Delly and I did love each other, but not at all in the way that we ought to as husband and wife. I loved Delly like a sister, but I loved Delly enough to marry her so she could continue seeing the real love of her life. Wasn’t that the deal I had planned on once offering Katniss?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll marry Delly. I know her well and we get along fine,” I said without emotion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And the Cartwrights are good-standing people. Only strange thing was that Miss Cartwright never dated any of the boys,” said Mom, looking over her notes. “And she’s not the prettiest thing... She’ll be working in the front of the bakery.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mellie, lay off it, all right? Peeta’s chosen who he wants to marry, now we have to go and draft up the contract and have them sign it. They can be married as soon as the school year ends,” Dad told her, and then he looked at me. “Unless you’d rather wait, son.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The sooner the better,” I said, again with no expression. Dad gave me a look of disbelief, and when Mom left to go and search for her notes on the contract, he sat down beside me and placed a hand on my back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you sure you want to do this, Peet?” he asked me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marry Delly? I mean yeah, why wouldn’t I?” I told him. “We’ve been friends since we were children.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But she’s not who you love,” Dad said. “I know Mom doesn’t like girls from the Seam, but if you wanted to marry one, she couldn’t stop you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to marry a girl from the Seam, I want to marry Delly,” I replied.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sounds like it,” said Dad in disbelief, and he sighed. “Just know you can always back out of the contract, but only before you’re married. Once you’re married, there’s no getting out of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, Dad.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m glad you understand... but I hate seeing you unhappy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not unhappy,” I said, now looking up at him. “I’ll have the bakery, won’t I? That’s something to be happy about.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened between you and Miss Everdeen?” he asked suddenly, and I looked away again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She doesn’t want to marry me,” I told him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you stopped after one try?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dad, if a girl says no, then I respect that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, I know. You’re a good boy, Peet. Always have been.” He stood up and bent down to kiss the top of my head. “Your mother says you’re soft, but you’ve got a noble heart. That makes you ten times the man as any other man in Twelve. She’ll come around, I’m sure. I don’t see how she could resist your charm.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She doesn’t want to get married, Dad. Especially not to me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why especially, hm? If she doesn’t want to get married, then it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with you, son. Only her.” He let out a sigh and then checked his wristwatch. “I’d better get back downstairs, your brothers are all alone down there.” He ruffled my hair and then left me sitting alone at the table.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, I wasn’t happy. Of course I wasn’t happy. I still loved Katniss and I just couldn’t stop. It hurt so much to have to marry someone else just to keep the bakery in my family. If I decided not to, and my brothers were already established in the family businesses they married into, then the bakery would go up for sale and anyone could buy it if they had the means to. I couldn’t let that happen, and that meant that I was left to be unhappy. At least Katniss could find some happiness...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Who was I kidding? This was all wrong. Is there anything that I could have done differently to make her change her mind? To make her want to love me? I knew she at least had some feelings for me just based on her behaviour the last time we saw each other, but did she love me? Was there anything that I could do to save whatever happiness we could have together?</span>
</p>
<p>As we signed the marriage contract, I gave up hope. I would be marrying Delly Cartwright, and while I loved Delly, I could never love her the way I loved Katniss.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <strong>KATNISS POV</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>It was now May. I was eighteen years old, officially, and had one year to find a husband or Agnessa would sign me up for the Marriage Bureau. We also had one month until the end of school - which meant one month until all the merchants married their matches, including Peeta. For the past few weeks, I’d been debating back and forth with myself as to whether or not I could try to stop Peeta’s engagement - whether or not I even </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I deserved no kindness from him, not after how I treated him, but I longed to be in his arms, to feel his lips on mine again. I longed to hold him and stroke his beautiful honey golden curls.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wanting Peeta was painful. I yearned for something I couldn’t have. I felt like a child who begged and begged for the latest new toy, but couldn’t have it. Yearning for a man you loved, but could not have, was like reaching for them, but you’re at opposite ends of a long and dark corridor. Peeta stood at one end and I at the other, and I stretched and stretched my arm until it hurt from stretching so far. No matter how far I stretched my arm, he was mere inches away from my touch. I just couldn’t reach him, and then the darkness would swallow him up as I cried and begged for him to be brought closer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If I didn’t beg him to break off his engagement to Delly, I would lose him forever. Adultery was a crime in the districts, so even if we did eventually marry other people, we’d have to see each other in secret. If he wanted to. I doubted that Delly would be okay with that, seeing as how she seemed to fawn over him at school. Lucky bitch. What I’d give to hang off his arm like that, to look up at him to see his beautiful smile, kiss those soft, warm lips, be surrounded by every scent that reminds me of him. I could never look at his face. Madge told me that Peeta looked miserable, but I could never look at him. Not begging him to break off his engagement would result in me forever having to watch Delly hold what I long to hold, kiss the lips that I yearn to kiss, share his home and his life... and his bed. I would also have to find my own husband - probably Gale, unless I did sign up for the Marriage Bureau.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gale was such an ass. He was so smug about telling Agnessa that I’d wanted to leave and had the audacity to, again, tell me that he would marry me. He didn’t ask - no, his exact words were, “I’d always marry you, Katniss.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I don’t want to marry you,” I told him. “I’d rather die alone of starvation than be married to you, after what you did.” He came to visit me at my home, since Agnessa had banned me from going into the woods.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You mean save you from eventually being found out and hunted down by peacekeepers?” Gale asked me with a smug look on his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would have had years on them before they noticed,” I hissed at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come on, Katniss. You have a year. You can either marry me or marry a complete stranger and I really think you’d be doing yourself a favour by marrying me,” he told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get your damn cock out of your mouth,” I told him. “You’re not an option for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Neither is baker boy,” said Gale, and I scowled furiously at him. “Bet you wish you didn’t turn down his proposal now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why are you being such an ass?” I spat at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because we could have been perfect together, but you won’t have me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I hope you fester in your misery and it eats you alive.” With that said, I stormed off far away from him. My family still maintained a somewhat strained friendship with his family, but Hazelle Hawthorne never knew the true assholery her son had gotten up to. I suppose I couldn’t blame him. He’d always been possessive of me, but never this bad. Maybe it was the mines that made him angry. Maybe he was mad that I had freedom in my sights and he could never thanks to the mines, so he clipped my wings and took away mine. If he couldn’t have it, no one could.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There were many, many eligible bachelors in the Seam that I could consider. Sage Darcy was a handsome young man of my age, but he looked too much like Gale for me to even consider him. Then there was Cael Carrys, who wasn’t half bad, either - but ‘Cael’ sounded too close to ‘Gale’, and he, too, resembled Gale quite a bit. I suppose Oren Willow was relatively decent, too, but one look at his olive skin and Seam grey eyes made me think too much of Gale, and I had to cross him off of my list, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Damn it, every Seam boy looked so much like Gale. I could never escape the hell that he thrust me into.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I was destined for the Marriage Bureau, at this rate. No merchant would have me, and I wouldn’t have any Seam boys. I lived in my own personal hell. Why weren’t there any Hebridean boys my age? Why was I the youngest refugee in the entire bloody district? Why hadn’t I just made more friends in my youth? Perhaps I could have found someone who was tolerable at least...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The option to beg Peeta to break off his engagement to Delly was still open. But could I </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> do that? All these months, I’d watched Delly fawn over him like a hopeless schoolgirl. She seemed happy to be engaged to him, and her best mate, Eleora Everly, always stuck close by and was very happy for them. But after months of hearing Madge say that Peeta looked miserable, and after months of refusing to look at him in fear of catching his eye, I finally glanced at him, and she was right - Peeta looked absolutely miserable. He never smiled anymore, and his face was always scrunched up in the signature scowl that I always wear on my face. Is that really what I look like all of the time? Well, if I do, then I must be hideous, because that scowl was an awful look on my sweet Peeta’s handsome face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Great, now I’m calling him </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> Peeta. He wasn’t mine. He never would be, not anymore. Gale was right, I regretted rejecting his proposal now six months prior. Had I accepted it, perhaps we’d all be happy. Peeta wouldn’t look miserable, I wouldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>be</span>
  </em>
  <span> miserable and maybe Peeta and I would be happy together. What a foolish belief. I said no because I thought I would be running off to escape the District. I should have never told Gale my plans.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To beg or not to beg? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer from a broken heart while I watch the love of my life marry some other girl, or to beg him to break it off with her and run away with me? No more heartaches for either Peeta nor me, if he still felt the same way he had back in November, but another girl would suffer the pain of a broken heart. I suppose there was a third option, one I hadn’t dared to consider. If Peeta married Delly, and I was forced to marry someone I didn’t love... I could end it all, if I so choose. Choose an endless slumber over succumbing to my fate, or fighting for what was left of the waning flame of hope that burned in my heart. Wouldn’t that please everyone? I wouldn’t have to marry. Peeta wouldn’t have to break the heart of another girl. Gale wouldn’t have to hate me, Agnessa wouldn’t have me as a burden against her... I suppose Prim would miss me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Prim. The sunshine of my cloudy days. Where sunshine was needed, she always brought it. I couldn’t leave her here in this hell of a world by herself. She had Agnessa, sure, but Agnessa had proven that she was not of pure and noble heart as she claimed to be. How could one threaten to call the peacekeepers on her own niece knowing that it may lead to her death?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I debated the morality of begging Peeta to break off his engagement to Delly for weeks. I felt bad for considering it, and I felt so selfish, but not being with Peeta was a fate worse than death, in my opinion. I couldn’t see myself with anyone other than Peeta, and for that, I felt so selfish. Could he see himself with Delly? Having her blonde, pudgy children? Kissing her? Holding her in the night?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I took a walk on a rainy day in June. There was one week until the end of the school term, and one week until Peeta was lost to me forever. Could I dare be brave enough to beg him to love me again? To give me another chance? Would he even listen to me? Did I have time to reconsider? No. No, I was out of time, and I had to make the decision. I could either run and hide and accept my fate like I usually did... or I could be brave, fight for the spark that Peeta and I have between us. Suddenly, I found myself in the back area of the bakery, and there, coming out of the back door carrying two loaves of burnt bread, was Peeta.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was now... or never.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Peeta,” I muttered quietly, too quietly for him to hear me, and then I cleared my throat. “Peeta.” He heard me. He stopped what he was doing, now soaked from the rain, and then turned to look at me. His blue eyes, once so full of love and warmth, were dull and devoid of all emotion. His honey golden curls were honey golden no longer, and were more of a mussed sandy colour. The rosiness of his cheeks had even escaped him, and his eyes looked sunken with the deepness of the dark circles beneath his eyes, an indicator that he wasn’t sleeping. “Peeta... you... you look awful...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That isn’t a very kind thing to say,” he replied despondently. He was maybe ten feet away from me, and we both stood in the rain staring at each other. In my eyes was a small ounce of hope that maybe, I could fix everything; in his eyes, nothing. The cacophony of raindrops pattering all around us drowned out the silence that passed between us.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What have I done to you?” I asked him quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve done nothing. I’m fine,” he told me neutrally.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, Peeta... You’re not.” Another silence passed between us, filled again by the cacophony of the rainstorm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why are you here, Katniss?” he asked me suddenly, breaking the silence. Here it was, the moment that I could either grasp or flee from. Whatever I said or did next was based on the critical decision that I would have to make in this very moment. Would I say ‘nevermind, nothing to worry about’ and walk away? I didn’t know how best to answer him. I let the long pause between us grow as I tried to determine what it was I wanted to do, and then what I wanted to say. There were so many words, and I wasn’t good at words. There was so much that I wanted to say to him, but I couldn’t get them to leave the tip of my tongue. “Well?” he asked me, and I realised a minute had passed before he broke the silence. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You have to say something, Katniss. Anything at all. Your future relies on this moment right here, right now.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>What are you going to do about it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to marry Delly.” I chose to fight rather than back down. His eyes appeared puzzled and he raised an eyebrow, and for a brief moment, it seemed that his blue eyes brightened just a little bit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t want me to marry Delly.” he repeated. “Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know why.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, Katniss, I don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said once that you knew me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah? Well I was wrong. I </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> know you at all.” Crap, another fork in the road. I could tell him how I felt or I could give up and turn around. How many difficult choices would I have to make today?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to marry Delly because... because...” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Come on, Katniss. You’re strong, and you’re brave. You can do this. This is Peeta. Fight for him. Fight for Peeta.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Because I love you.” This seemed to stun him just a bit. His eyes widened and he took a small step back, and for a moment, I could see a look of wonder in his eyes, but whether or not I reignited the flame in his heart I wouldn’t know, not at least from visual observation. His surprised expression softened into a scowl.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re too late, Katniss,” he told me with a tone of defeat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Am I?” I asked him. I was on autopilot now. I’d chosen twice to fight for my heart, and now I couldn’t stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes. I marry Delly in a week.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I am.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Peeta...” This was going to be a tough fight. I had to draw up everything I’d ever wanted to say to him and reviewed it all as quickly as I could. If I wanted to win his heart back, I would need every weapon in my arsenal. “I know that I’ve not been very open with you about my feelings... and I know that I’ve not been very kind to your heart. It wasn’t right of me. But I’ve always loved you, Peeta, so much... You were my first friend, and you fought so hard to stay my friend, and I just pushed you away again and again. I was never grateful for your friendship... at least, not outwardly. Inside, I admired you and your bravery. You took beatings for me - how could I not respect that? I’d wished you hadn’t, but I couldn’t stop you from worming your way into my life.” I took a step closer to him, and he didn’t move, his eyes firmly on mine. “I regret not accepting your proposal. I should have. I knew that you would be the only person who could ever change my mind about marriage.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What changed your mind?” he asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Agnessa,” I said honestly, my shoulders falling. “I stupidly told Gale about my plan to leave and he ratted me out to Agnessa when I refused again to marry him... She told me that if I left, she’d call the peacekeepers on me and that I had to marry within the year or she’d register me with the Marriage Bureau.” At this, Peeta crossed his arms, his face hardening.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, so this is a completely </span>
  <em>
    <span>selfish</span>
  </em>
  <span> thing you’re doing,” he said harshly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everything I do is selfish, Peeta. I admit to that and I know that. But I’m not here just because I want to beg for your forgiveness so I don’t get stuck married to someone I don’t know. I’m here because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>won’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>marry anyone but you, Peeta. You’re it for me, and if you don’t want me anymore... I’d rather take my chances against the peacekeepers in the woods.” I paused to check his expression, which remained stoic. “I meant what I said when I couldn’t stomach the idea of you marrying anyone but me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You told me I couldn’t marry you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was wrong. I was so damn wrong... Peeta, even if I did run away and I succeeded, I would be miserable without you. You’re the light that I need to survive in this cold and dark world. You have been since we met. Peeta, you are </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> to me and I am </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> giving up until I know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to make you forgive me and give me a second chance. I know I don’t deserve it... but I have to try.” He glanced down at his feet, which were soaked and caked with mud, and I took this opportunity to approach him. I rested a hand on his cheek, and his blue eyes fluttered closed. His skin was still as warm as it was on that chilly day in November, even in the rain. “Peeta, look at me,” I whispered, and he opened his eyes to meet mine. “I love you so much... If you still care for me, I beg you to let me try again. Please, Peeta...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t answer me. Instead, he held my gaze, very slightly leaning into my palm on his cheek. It was so subtle, but I could feel the slight pressure of him pressing his cheek into my palm, and I knew then that all wasn’t lost. Cradling his face in my palms, I closed my eyes and brought my lips to his, kissing him with everything I could muster. All of the strength I had left, all of the energy, and every ounce of growing love that I felt for this man - my Peeta - feeding into the kiss. Soon after, I felt his hands rest on my waist, and then his arms wrapped tightly around me. He held me tightly as I snaked my arms around his neck and buried my hand in his soaked hair, deepening our kiss as best as I could. But all glorious things must come to an end, and once again, Peeta had to break the kiss, resting his forehead against mine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marry me, Peeta,” I whispered to him, mirroring his words from all those months ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will,” he told me. “I’ll call off the engagement to Delly... I love you so much, Katniss.” There he was, my sweet, caring, warm and loving Peeta! He sounded as if he were crying, but I couldn’t see the tears running down his cheeks in the rain. He smiled at me, for the first time in months, and he kissed me again.</span>
</p>
<p>Finally, I had my Peeta back, and he had me. We were meant to be, the two of us - made for each other and made to love one another. He was the Orpheus to my Eurydice, willing to go to all kinds of lengths to rescue me from a dark fate. Finally, our hearts began to beat in unison, but our journey was far from over.</p>
<p>
  <span>He has an engagement to break off, and we not had a marriage contract to negotiate between his parents and Agnessa.</span>
</p>
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